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The Mysteries of Margo Rabb
Teen Author, Chocolate Lover, and Eternal Optimist
by Judy Schoenberg, staff writer
She loves to read and write. When she's not doing those two things she loves to shop, shop, shop! She's cautious (always wears sunscreen) but likes to indulge (she likes to eat chocolate—often!).
Meet Margo Rabb.
She's the mysterious M.E. Rabb to her readers who know her as a teen fiction writer. She has written four books in the Missing Persons series about two teen girls who run away from Queens. M.E. Rabb, 32, is a native of Sunnyside, Queens, New York and based the characters Sam and Sophie Shattenberg of her novels on herself and her sister Jackie who both longed to be private detectives just like the characters.
Straight from the Fall Café coffee shop in Brooklyn, New York, full of lots of young writers typing away on the their laptops sipping their morning iced coffee, Margo gives us her version of the ups and downs of being a writer, her love of shopping and her sister, and most of all what it takes to have faith in yourself and your dreams even in the face of hardship.
Make It Happen
Ever since she was 11, Margo loved books. She loved to write stories and loved her English class at Junior High School PS 125 in Sunnyside, but she never knew she could be a writer or that it was a career people had. She read lots of Sweet Valley High books, but she never felt they were about her life as a Jewish girl growing up in New York City. They were about girls from California with blond hair, tans, and big houses in the suburbs—not about living in an attached house in the gritty city, talking the #7 train to school, and eating bagels and lox on Sunday morning. After college Margo worked at a publishing company and met poets and writers who she aspired to be like. She got a Master's degree in fine arts and started writing, and now she is a published author!
Not So Glam
Being a writer sounds good on paper, but Margo is not shy about the part of her job that is unglamorous too. She spends lots of time sitting at home without makeup on, typing all day long. After giving a reading of a short story at a local Barnes and Noble about two girls from Queens running away to Indianapolis, an editor came up to Margo and asked her if she would consider writing four books! She had a very short turnaround time for this project and had to spend eight hours a day at a computer for a year! That certainly didn't leave her lots of time for her other passions!
Sweet Defeat
The number of people who read books is declining and it's hard for Margo to keep faith in her work. Being a writer means you get lots of rejection—and it's hard to keep believing in yourself. Margo knows you have to keep trying even when your story may be rejected 25 times! Now that Margo has a book out, she still worries about people not liking it. Being discouraged by that is really hard but Margo says that the secret to success is sticking with it. Margo is genuine and upfront—sometimes she has to rewrite each page more than 20 times. Everything is much harder than it seems. But she knows that for every bad page you write there's a good one coming.
Sisters First
Margo is most proud of sticking by her older sister Jackie in their relationship. Margo and Jackie didn't get along in high school. Margo was more girly and into clothes and makeup and Jackie was into hiking boots and being on the math team (just like Sam and her sister Sophie in her novels). Their mom died when Margo was 19 and their dad died six years after that. That's when Margo and Jackie became really close—something Margo would never have predicted in high school. In fact, Jackie walked Margo down the aisle this past summer when she got married! "I never thought my sister and I could be such good friends—we are polar opposites! I'm glad we became so close even though she lives in Utah now, because lots of families give up on each other."
Have Faith in You
Remember even if you are feeling horrible that it will always get better even though you don't realize it. "My mom died in a week after being diagnosed with melanoma. After my dad died I was at a real low-point—my writing wasn't going well and I had broken up with my boyfriend. I would have never realized then what I know now—that I would be so close with my sister, that I would find my husband, Marshall, and have a family."
Teen Truths
Margo knows that it's hard to be a teenager because you have no idea what the future will be like but you have the same problems as adults—love, heartbreak, failure—and accomplishments, only you don't have a lot of experience to deal with it. "Now I know that for every guy that breaks up with you, there's one who will fall in love with you. For every C in physics, there is something you excel at. I wished I would have realized when I was younger that if you feel dorky or uncool in high school it doesn't mean it will be that way in the future."
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