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I had coffee in D.C. with a friend and afterwards he bought me a book by one of his favored authors, Anne Lamott. The book, called “Some Assembly Required,” is her journal of the first year of her grandson’s life. I’m reading it, savoring it, laughing out loud at it, and am now a fan of all things Anne Lamott. I fully intend to read everything she’s ever written, and will write in the future. I am now money in her back pocket.

I do this with writers, fall in love, gobble up their every word, pine for their next book. I am very faithful. Michael Chabon, Ian McEwan, Barbara Kingsolver, Jonathan Franzen, you will have me forever. But I feel a kinship with Anne Lamott. She is a writer. I am a writer. She is a messed up person of faith. I am a messed up person of faith. She is a grandmother. I am a grandmother. She is an anxious worrier with friends who impart great wisdom to her which she mostly ignores. I am not an anxious worrier, but my husband is, which is why I am determined to find ways to read parts of her books to him. He needs her. He needs the kind of friends she has. He has me, but he doesn’t appreciate me. Anne doesn’t always appreciate her friends either. Her die hard, last resort friend whom she only turns to when she is on the verge of spinning off into outerspace from anxiety, she calls Horrible Bonnie. Horrible, because Bonnie never worries.

I never worry either. I am very, very laid back. I am sure that my husband sometimes thinks of me as Horrible Lara. Worriers like to be validated in their worrying. Worriers worry about people who don’t worry. We make them crazy. We are icing on the cake of worries. They have to wring their hands doubletime to make up for all the ways in which we are failing to hold the universe together. But anyway, back to Anne Lamott.

I am sure that if I were to meet Anne, we would soon be best friends. How could she not feel the same way about me as I now feel about her? There is only one thing about Anne that bothers me. She has a more highly evolved work ethic than I do. She must have, because she is about my same age, but she has written over a dozen books and I have written just one. My one is a very good book, but still… Maybe Anne has written so many more books than I have because she is such a worrier and she worries that if she doesn’t write lots of books, people won’t want to be her friend. But I want to be her friend in spite of the fact that she’s written lots of books! So once she and I are friends, she can slow way down with all that book a year business. That can’t be good for her health.

The thing about Anne is, she writes not only novels, but also books about her life. Maybe I should be writing books about my life too. How hard can that be? You live a certain amount of time, then you write about it. It’s probably much easier than making up a bunch of people and then having to figure out what they’ve done with their lives before you can even write the book. Maybe, once Anne and I are friends, and seeing as how she already has so many books about her, she will want to write a book about me. I’m not that fascinating, but neither is she and she’s managed to write lots of funny books about herself. Anne would be able to spice me right up.

Anne lives in San Francisco and I live in Baltimore so that will make being best friends challenging, but it will be fun to fly back and forth to see each other. Being friends with Anne may actually improve my productivity as a writer. Although it’s hard to imagine how Anne even has time to live her life with all the writing she does. Anne is so prolific that it’s kind of annoying. I enjoy reading Anne’s books and they make me want to write more, and better, but Anne herself makes me feel kind of lazy. And who wants a friend who makes you feel like an underachiever? Anne’s problem is she just keeps on writing, even when the rest of us are stuck. Anne could make being stuck as a writer into a book.

Which is too bad, because I really think we could have been friends.