Editor's note: This is an excerpt from "Women of Character: Profiles of 100 Prominent LDS Women" edited by Susan Easton Black and Mary Jane Woodger.
By Susan Easton Black and Mary Jane Woodger
Because she was much younger than her siblings, Anita Stansfield learned to play alone as a child. Her playmates were imaginary, and her fun unbounded. Little did she know that the vivid imagination honed in childhood would one day help her become the reigning queen of LDS romantic fiction.
Known for shattering the stereotypical romance novel, Stansfield masterfully weaves “great storytelling with intense psychological depth as she focuses on the emotional struggles of the human experience.” From heartwarming to heartstopping fiction, readers find her characters and their stories not easily forgotten.
The road from childhood imagination to romantic novelist has been bumpy for Stansfield, and few of those familiar with her many accomplishments would guess that she has struggled to overcome feelings of low self-esteem. She was born in 1961 to Arnold and Dawn Nita Barney, good people who loved each other and their daughter. However, both parents were raised in dysfunctional families and suffered from poor self-esteem, which they unintentionally passed to her.
Stansfield believes that the majority of her personal struggles come from feelings of inadequacy. “Satan knows just when to throw the punches during the emotional cycles that women are prone to,” she says. “A little whisper goes a long way when we look at the flaws of our lives through a magnifying glass and everyone else’s through a telescope turned backward.”
Stansfield started writing at the age of 16, making a conscious decision that she would someday be a published novelist. At 19, she married Vince John Stansfield and they became the parents of five children. Stansfield describes motherhood as being either “completely challenging” or “joy beyond description.”
She feels the same way about writing. In 1994 she published her first novel, "First Love and Forever." More than 50 novels followed. By mixing motherhood and writing, Stansfield has learned to “expect interruptions and deal with them.” Her motto is “Practice. Practice. Practice.”
The author “relies on inspiration to bring all the elements together and lend authenticity and balance to her work.” In so doing, she quips, “I have to give credit where it’s due or I could get struck by lightning. ... Over the years, line upon line, my Heavenly Father has taught me the true source of my gift, and that what I do is absolutely from Him.”
She adds, “A person can be extremely gifted and never go anywhere with it. I believe that my persistence and tenacity are the reasons for my success. The talent is a gift. My choice to work hard, sacrifice, face the opposition and keep going is exactly that: a choice. I have many people express envy for my gift (usually facetiously), but my secret thought is that they would never want to pay the price of persistence that got me to where I am today.”
When readers tell Stansfield that the characters in her books seem real, she considers it a great compliment. But a far better compliment is when she learns that lives have been changed and testimonies strengthened because of reading her novels.
After writing romance novels for more than 20 years, her perception of romance has changed from when she was a teenager. She now believes that real romance is “about mutual love, respect and admiration between two people.” Writing romance novels has also changed her views of her husband, Vince, who is “a mountain man whose interests seem far from her desire to be a stay-at-home writer.”
She said that one day it hit her: “This guy’s just like those rugged heroes in historical novels.” She admits that his willingness to help with the children so she can write “makes me feel loved.”
Stansfield became the first LDS romance novelist to sell a million books, and her efforts have garnered impressive awards, including the Independent LDS Booksellers’ Best Fiction Award; the League of Utah Writers’ Golden Quill Award; and Covenant Communications’ 1997 special award for Pioneering New Ground in LDS Fiction. In 2007 she won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Whitney Academy.
In spite of these accolades and others, Stansfield believes that her greatest achievement has been starting adulthood as “a relatively dysfunctional person who was pretty clueless about life” and becoming “emotionally healthy.” She has worked very hard to overcome childhood issues and create a functional family.
Those who know Stansfield agree that she is a magnet for the wonderment that has come into her life as a prize-winning novelist and for overcoming childhood issues that threatened to mar her adulthood.
