Critical Thinking...

Problems abound already. I am sitting, thinking about my characters, wondering what I shall have them do (if only they could make coffee, roll cigarettes and get loans from the bank). It occurs to me that I'm shooting everything down as I come up with it. This has been going on a while now, so I have a council session, dedicated to further thinking on the subject. The council (luckily, with multiple personalities, calling a council meeting can be done in the car, and requires no triangular sangwidges, although tea in excess is always welcome...) has come up with the following issue, which is delaying the timely execution of the project: "Critical Thinking" This is my problem - thinking as a critic, and not a writer.
What happens is you automatically take to pieces everything that comes into your head. Something as simple as a guy getting into a car becomes "Why a guy?", "Why 'getting' - why not already in it?" "Why not getting out?" "Why a car?" - investigation that I would do in college in a vain attempt to pick up hidden messages, symbols, etc. in the books I studied.
Many say this is the death of true literature, because you reduce everything to some kind of linguistic game. I disagree, I think critics are almost as much a part of art as the artists themselves. Of course, this is not the critics in the papers, who generally tell you somehting is 'crap' or 'written by the left leg of Jesus himself'. Paper critics never tell you why something is good or bad - yet this is the original job of the Critic.
The critic allows punters like you and me to gain a better insight into a work by explaining its background, symbols, metaphors, etc. If you never saw a film in your life, you might think a lot of the stuff about now is shite. Why can't they do more? The fact is, by having a background in watching films, even as a passtime, you understand many of the limitations of the genre. When someone comes along with a new way of doing things, or an improvement in technology, there's a huge "WOW" by the audience, because on a reasoned level, we understand they are doing something that up until now was considered 'impossible'.
In writing, there's a similar issue, except innovation isn't a speedy as with film. Now, I'm definitely trying to break new boundaries here, but the problem I have is that I don't want to knock around old hackneyed phrases or ideas either. I remember reading the first 'minimalist' story, and deciding I didn't like it because it was too easy (for the writer). God damn, but I was wrong. I think now 'minimalism' (a term I don't relish) creates some of the most powerful writing. It is humane, simple, and allows the reader to delve as deep or as shallow as they wish into a story or its characters. But writing in the no-nonsense approach creates its own difficulties. Essentially, it's like your trying to write a prose poem. You need to get the most from each word, each phrase and each moment of the story. And then, you have to make it look effortless. All who know me understand I prefer the wheezy, t-shirt soaked approach to work. NEVER make it look easy - they'll buy you a pint for it then.
Anyway, back to the original problem. Writing as a critic doesn't work, because you stop yourself too often to actually create anything. 'This is a cliche' or 'that is ridiculous', or 'using so many words is a waste'. Worse, there have been three days this week that I've had a great idea, then sat down with paper and pen, and stared at the empty page, thinking 'what were the words'? 'what was the idea'? and (absolute worst - bottom of the barrell worst) 'it has to be meaningful!'
This thinking, and this activity has beaten my creative impulse into near submission. However, the Council have called out the BEG (Bodliy Emotional Guard), and hopefully the writing process will now contain less critique-ing, and more actual writing. However, this will mean that more that gets put down here will be crap.
Live with it, because as bad as it may be to you, it'll be far, far worse for me.