Hi Duncan, I am very sympathetic to this process you speak of — and which is unfolding within you — because words can play tricks on us, and people using them can mislead us.

For example, the Buddhist doctrine of anattā — no self — doesn’t mean “nothing.” Even “emptiness,” the translation of the Pali word Śūnyatā, which means “all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature,” doesn’t mean “nothing,” nor does it imply a “void.” Tricky language.

The one anchor point for me was actually a comment by the Ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, which I’ll leave for you:

…the way of how it is not, and how it is necessary for it not to be; this, I tell you, is a way wholly unknowable. For you could not know what is not — that is impossible — nor could you express it.

Writing of “no-thing,” as you do, necessarily means that it is not nothing. The truth you’ve found is valid — as is this truth — otherwise there can be no story at all to write about, even if there is no writer.

Bon voyage!

James