What to do...While you wait

What to do, while you wait:

My first experience with a literary agent went well, or so I thought. I sent out my letter and within one business day they got back with me. That’s good right? Well, after thinking about it, if he actually liked some part of my book or idea he may have taken a little more time to consider it. So, anyway what I’m getting at is this. My next three letters went out, and I know that I may be waiting a little longer, which I think is a good thing. But, what do I do while I wait? What would you do?

First off, you can always go back through your manuscript, edit, reedit, or rethink scenes that might be weak, work on dialog, get someone else to read it… tired of working on the manuscript, or you’re at a good place with it.

Try to blog, blogging is a great way to hone your skills. Just don’t fall prey to text talk, and by that I mean; remember to write how you would in your book, not in little sparse phrases. I use to write training material and that’s what I was familiar with. We’d spend hours crafting training, and bullet phrases that broke down the meaning to one small phase, often not even sentence worthy.

Start a new manuscript or just write down your ideas. I’ve started work on my next book. I’ve learned a lot about character development and have started creating profiles for each of my characters. That way when I write about them, they already have back-stories to draw from.

Maybe, you can do some writing exercises. Think of a scene that you’ve never tried to write before. Do you write romance? Well how about writing an action fight scene? Have you ever described the sky, the earth, a little girls face? You can also work on conversations, pick two people that are very different from each other and write dialog in their voice. This can really help develop the skills you’ll need to have characters jump off the page. Here’s an idea: Write one page of dialog with a sweet little girl, talking to Satan. If you do this, I want to read it. Not only could it be very funny, but also it could be very scary.

As always read as much as you can. Read books, other people’s blogs, magazines, etc.

Well, those are my thoughts and tips for today. If you have any pointers, thoughts, or questions for me, please write.