In January of 2014 I was brutally raped. I was 20 years old and in medical school, and for a month I was in denial. I was class president and had to welcome and organize the freshman class's reception. I was in a casual relationship with a guy that was pretty fun. I was in love with my best friend (a girl) but didn't have the guts to tell her, because I knew she was in love with me, too. And this is the kind of girl and the kind of friendship that just doesn't turn into a fling ad then flames out. This was marriage material, and at 20, I knew.

So the assault happened and I was so shook up. After the denial passed, I spent the month of March in bed, barely showering, crying my eyes out and missing class. I was a pretty popular girl so many of my classmates called and called, and I never picked up. Eventually they stopped calling. Eventually I, once surrounded by everyone, was all alone.

For a med student, worse than the depression and the social isolation and the self hatred and the destruction going on within was the fact I was failing absolutely every class. I mean, how could I not? I didn't go. My affinity for medicine was tenuous at best.

I was miserable.

So I talked to the dean and took a medical leave of absence (granted by my psychiatrist, who was a professor of psychiatry at med school) and it was handled very discretely. My parents came to live with me in my apartment in April. They did't leave until August. But one thing became quite clear to me as all the little threads of my life became unraveled: I hated medicine. I hated the way I was living my life. And even living in a culture where it's acceptable for parents to support you well into your 20s, I didn't want that for myself anymore. Med school was publicly subsidized (I live in Brazil and got into a top five school, tuition paid for by the tax payers). But my living expenses were crazy high. Nice apartment. Uber everywhere. The doctors to treat my evident mental problems. Retail therapy because my mom didn't know what was going on and in the absence of an explanation, she filled the time by spending half of the day convincing me to get out of bed, and the other to make me try on things to make myself feel pretty and better.

The charges on the credit cards ran high, but my mood stayed low.

Everything about this made me sick. At 16 I had been a star in the literary world. Ran a successful book blog, had a great relationship with many literary agents and editors at major houses, had people clamoring to read what I wrote because even as a teen, I was recognized for having a unique voice and grand ideas. I turned my back on all of that because it seemed to me like a farfetched dream, not something to build a career on.

So then in June I began picking up the pieces. I decided I hated med school and would make it my last priority. I decided to take matters into my own hands. The only marketable skill I had in a third world country where Portuguese is the native tongue but English is valued like crazy is that I can spin together a sentence, I can craft a good yarn, and I could do it quickly. I still had contacts. They pointed me in the right direction.

I began content writing. The best site for this is www.constant-content.com. Getting approved is a breeze if you had a good grasp of grammar. After that, you look at what's selling and write 500-600 word articles priced at $35-40. They take a third of the cut for the platform and the bridge they are between the writers and clients, but it's well worth the money. After that you begin having a good rep and some clients contact you directly. You don't even have to write stuff on spec and hope it sells anymore - they straight up request, you write, and you make your money.

They pay out once a month via sites like Paypal.

From there, there are a number of private communities you can join for writers for hire. Writers who want to make money. The content isn't always thrilling (in fact, it's downright mind numbing at times), but if you work at it, you make enough contacts that pay well.

In my own life, it worked because I got acquainted with a writer who started with KDP right around when it began. They were one of the first on the ground and they were making bank. KU came around and they needed a lot of output. So they outsourced to reputable writers like me (all on the up and up, lawyers involved for transfer of rights, NDAs, all that). They paid well. And that's when I realized writing fiction can pay well. Sure, they were visionaries who invested heavily when this was all uncharted territory. They got the perks of KU1. They're still making it big with KU2.0. I wrote for them, and for some others, and I wrote everything you can think of. I'm pretty tame in my sexual leanings, but goddamn I was a fucking sexual connoisseur for my ghostwriting. Monsters, tentacles, bikers, vampires, fucking everything. Most of what I wrote came from vague ideas they wanted to see on paper, so I had a good margin of freedom to do with it what I wanted. I learned pacing. I learned the crank.

I learned. With KU2.0 I got commissioned to write a few romances. Being a fierce participant of NaNoWriMo ever since 2007, I knew my way around writing long works. This was different, of course, because my clients insisted on a tight outline (which I particularly loathe). Along the way I also picked up editing gigs for extra cash, proof reading, translation...basically filled my entire toolbox with skills I'd need for when I completed what I considered my apprenticeship into the ways of self-publishing and launched myself out there.

You know what happened in all this journey? I climbed out of that fucking hole that motherfucking asshole tossed me in three years ago. I became self-sufficient. I am not breaking the bank or anything, but I consider myself well paid and I live in Brazil, so even a lower end USD salary is golden here. I learned this isn't just a passion; it is a fucking job. Ghostwriting the way I did it gave me a comfortable leaving but there was a ceiling to what I was ever going to earn doing it.

So now I'm motivated to be one of those dataporn posts you see that make you go like, "DUDE. I WANT THE FINANCIAL FREEDOM THAT COMES WITH THAT ROYALTY CHECK." The success stories are rare, to be sure, and this is grueling work all the same. But I do it because writing saved my life.

I'm not clinically depressed anymore, after two years of weekly (sometimes biweekly) therapy, five attempts at finding the right antidepressant which I still take, a visit to my psychiatrist once a month, and a careful upkeep of my life. Recently I ended an abusive relationship and before this week I hadn't written a word since it ended, in September. I burned out because from Jan 2016-September 2016 I dealt with my shitty relationship by busying myself writing all day long. It wasn't my best work. I honestly think I set myself back a bit.

But when I look back, I see a scared, fragile, broken little girl who still depended on Mommy and Daddy to exist. Now I see a woman who has her shit together, who's competent, who has miles to go to where she wants to be. But she started taking the right steps. She left medical school a year after she took the medical leave, dropped out cold turkey against everyone's advice because "oh my god, you're going to be a doctor someday!", who enrolled in law school and paid the tuition of the money she made from her first six months of content writing, who passed the admissions process of the best law school in the country earlier this year (also tuition paid for by the tax payers), who pays for all her shit (except medical bills which my parents insist on covering). I see a future where before I only saw darkness. And I see that spark I know I have, that sharpness that makes me believe I'm gonna kill it now that I finally said enough to my training wheels and decided to take a chance on myself.

That's why I do it. You have to light a fire inside yourself and believe in it more fiercely than zealots believe in their god. And before you say that's all well and good, but it's all idealism, let me say: writing as a career is a tough fucking road to follow. If you are really pressed for money right now, consider content writing. PM me if you want more tips. If you can do it full time, I don't see why you couldn't make at least a grand a month doing it. I saved up enough for a full year's living expenses before I dropped everything to devote myself entire to self-publishing and building my own catalog.

Just don't give up.