Validation is always nice. Over the past eight years, since I began to actively write fiction again, several people have tried to get me to mend my ways and write in a different style.

What I do is consistent, but rather old fashioned (or so I am told) and some have called it (erroneously) third omniscient. Luna Black got the closest to it when she called it “Russian Panoramic” but that was not right either.

I tried so hard to tone the style down that I only ended up dissatisfied and unhappy over the past few years. I have a style that is natural to me, which started developing back when I was reading Dostoyevski, Tolstoy, and most especially Nicolai Gogol at 13.

Then yesterday a present from a friend arrived.

It’s a book by James Wood called “How Fiction Works.”

Lo and Behold, the style I write in has a name. The entire book is about Free Indirect Style.

Yes, it is an old-fashioned style; but so long as it works, why fix it?