According to Jewish comedian Sam Levenson, God has played matchmaker ever since he introduced Eve to Adam: “Have I got a nice girl for you!”

The Almighty guided Abraham to Sarah, the Mae West of the Old Testament. He used thirsty camels to bring about Rebekah’s marriage to Isaac. He masterminded Boaz’s marriage to Ruth, the great-great-great-great-grandma of King David and, ultimately, Jesus Christ.

But finding a spouse who will stick with a writer? That task might make even God scratch His head.

Online dating services insist they can find the perfect partner for anyone — even writers. One website includes 29 dimensions by which future mates can be measured. (Why not a nice round number like 30? Just sayin’.)

These surveys never include correct questions for potential writer spouses. I submit the following in hopes of helping experts increase the reliability of the profiles they create.

Would you want to marry someone:

1. Who wears a baggy sweat suit and feather boa to work?
2. Whose house and yard officially have been declared a landfill?
3. Who will awaken you at 3:00 a.m. to brainstorm a dozen new book titles?
4. Who works 80 hours a week and nets 2.4 cents per hour, minus Xerox and Prozac costs?
5. Who invites poison experts and chain saw murderers over for coffee?
6. Who maxes out credit cards attending conferences where hundreds study “beats”?
7. Who crashes weddings, funerals and Rotary meetings to develop characters?
8. Who robs a 7-Eleven, crashes your car, and sleeps in a dumpster in order to research and “feel” a crime story?*  **
9. Who needs years of psychotherapy to recover from her last fiction plot?
10. Who vandalizes signs with apostrophes in the wrong places?
11. Who drinks espresso to calm down?

*If a potential spouse boasts lots of rich relatives who can post bail money, the marriage’s survival chances increase exponentially. **Yes, I’ve listed 11 questions, not ten, for researchers who are all about 29 dimensions.

Some claim anyone who agrees to these conditions resembles the dependability of a JELL-O sidewalk.

Exactly. God, in His matchmaking wisdom, has designed special lunatics who voluntarily accept the impossible task of marriage to a writer.

Civilized society should be warned: these spouses often appear normal. My husband of 41 years eats Cheerios every morning. He serves as the rational voice on church and community boards.

Yet he regularly rescues my manuscripts from the Black Holes of cyberspace.

He attends my book signings, hauling and hovering as needed.

When I was writing biographies, he didn’t mind sharing my breakfast conversations with dead people.

Finally, he told me money and success weren’t important, as long as I was doing what God wanted.

And they say writers are nuts.

What special craziness in you or your spouse keeps you both sane — sort of — as you pursue an impossible occupation?