Here I will invoke William Carlos Williams' imperative for poetry "No words but in things." Perhaps it is a bit of overstatement in its exclusiveness. However, it's a potent rephrasing of "show, don't tell." Rather than just explaining, I think it's helpful to play word association games in order to work out the best pieces of concrete language to evoke the emotions or situations you want. Rather than saying you're waiting, what words that refer to material objects could you replace with the prosaic word "wait?" For example, people wait for trains, planes, rains if they're farmers, for the spin cycle of the washing machine to transfer their clothes to a dryer. Hope that helps.
