As I'm spending the entire week analysing short stories and working on just a couple of scenes, this is allowing me to take my time deciding who and what each character is going to be.
I spend the mornings working on my scene and stopping to fill in the blanks about my characters if the scene is not progressing. Analysing a story and sitting to write helps me get myself in the right frame of thought.
Unlike before when writers probably did not have so much on their minds or had a slower pace of life, it may have been easier to have those few things they can entirely focus on. But here I have all the things I have to do this week, month or year staring at me right in the face. And it begins in the mornings, as we don't have offices to go to. This distinction of beginning to think in a writerly manner and then getting down to the meat of is showing me a certain depth I can get to, while writing after that. I have to remember to continue that after the course that I'm doing is over.
It's not the same with reading novels, then I want to read more and I get lost in them and procrastinate but with short stories, some authors are such craftsmen, my hands itch to go work on my own writing.
What I really thinks happens is, while reading and analysing short stories, the mind gets a break from all life-related things and gets into first gear, switching those things out and then the second if I follow this.