Emma Claire Sweeney, Something Rhymed  , a website about famous literary friendships.

I met Emily during a time when we were both living in rural Japan – working as English teachers by day, and scribbling stories in secret by night.

We both have fond memories of the moment we first dared to admit our literary ambitions: we were in a garlic-themed restaurant at the time, chatting over bowls of noodles.

I clearly remember talking with Emily that night about the way novels give us the illusion that we can mind read. Over a decade later, I keep circling back to this notion. But I only recently realised that my preoccupation with this likely stems from my yearning to be a more eloquent interpreter of my autistic sister – something I’ve blogged about here.

The Waifs and Strays of Sea View Lodge – the novel I’m completing for my agent, Veronique Baxter at David Higham – is inspired by my relationship with my sister, and its main theme goes back to my first literary conversation with Emily: the impossibility of truly knowing even those closest to us but the restorative powers of our attempts to do so.

From our discussion back in that garlic-themed restaurant to the final redrafting of this novel, Emily has joined me on each of my deviations, uphill struggles, and delightful discoveries. And she has given me the great privilege of sharing her intellectual, creative, and emotional journey too.

Until this point, our writing careers have grown roughly in tandem, but now, both nearing the end of novel drafts, we fear that the coming year could put new pressures on our relationship. Wary of the dangers of artistic rivalry, we are keen to glean tips from our literary heroines on how to sustain an invaluable friendship through potentially trickier times.

Throughout 2014, our new website, Something Rhymed, will be profiling a different pair of female writer pals each month, and we’ll be challenging ourselves (and our blog followers) to complete an activity based on a prominent feature of that particular friendship.

We’ll be posting regular updates on our progress, and would love for you to get involved by letting us know of any literary pals we could profile.

Or you might like to make it your New Year’s resolution to complete the activities alongside us. You can find out about the first challenge here.  

About Emma

Emma Claire Sweeney won an Escalator Award back in 2005, after graduating with distinction from UEA’s Creative Writing MA. Her fiction has also been granted Arts Council and Royal Literary Fund Awards, and has been shortlisted for several others, including the Asham, Wasafiri and Fish. Most recently, she has been published in The Times, Mslexia, and The Independent on Sunday. She is represented by Veronique Baxter at David Higham and is currently completing The Waifs and Strays of Sea View Lodge – a novel inspired by her autistic sister.

Last year, Emma Claire published The Memoir Garden – an Arts Council sponsored collection of poems comprising the words and experiences of adults with learning disabilities.

Having co-written literary features, this year Emma Claire and her long-standing writer friend, Emily Midorikawa, launched Something Rhymed .

Visit Emma Claire’s website. 

Follow Emma Claire on Twitter @emmacsweeney 

About Emily

Emily Midorikawa grew up in Yorkshire. She is a half-English, half-Japanese writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. She has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia and her work has been published in, amongst others, Aesthetica, Mslexia, the Telegraph, The Times and the UEA anthology Otherwheres.

Her as-yet-unpublished first novel A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing came joint-third in the SI Leeds Literary Prize 2012, third in the Yeovil Literary Prize 2013, and was long-listed for the Mslexia Novel Competition 2013.

Emily is one of the writers involved with Tangled Roots, a literary project that celebrates the stories of mixed-race families from Yorkshire. With her writer friend Emma Claire Sweeney, she runs the website Something Rhymed , which profiles the literary friendships of famous authors.