When you’re involved in the filming of a movie, there is a saying, “Hurry up and wait.” It comes from the fact that as soon as you arrive, at the crack of dawn, or often before, you are rushed into action. Not movie action…”getting ready” action.

Here is what a day on the set is like:

Arrive. Stand around for a bit, maybe drinking coffee, probably not because Craft Services (food wagon) is not ready yet. Of course, one by one the stars and crew are walking up to it and getting egg-white omelettes and waffles. By “not ready” they mean for the extras or bit players (i.e. me).

After you’ve stood around for a while, someone will undoubtedly run up to you and yell, “Have you been to wardrobe? Why aren’t you in wardrobe?” Half way to wardrobe, someone else will grab you and send you to make-up and hair. Your make-up will be almost done, but your hair will still be a mess when the first person will burst into the trailer and say, “I thought I told you to be in wardrobe!” So then you run off to wardrobe and stand around and wait for an hour while they find the shoes from yesterday that the gave the star a blister and so they need to adjust the strap. After you finally have your costume on (or what you’re wearing is approved) and a picture is snapped of you, then you step out into the now light morning and someone from hair and make-up yells at you because your hair is only half curled! You get dragged back to that trailer and wait while they wig the starlet. Finally, they get your hair done just as another assistant bursts in yelling for “all background on the set!” That’s you, so you hurry after them and on the way there, someone tells them over their walkie talkie to send the background to the holding bin (the holding bin is usually an outdoor tent in winter and a sweltering window-less room in the summer). So you go there with all the rest of the background and you sit there. For about four hours.

Finally, hair and make-up people start wandering through, touching everyone up, just so you think something might be happening. Then they finally call everyone to the set, where you wait another hour for them to finish lighting the scene. They tell you where to stand, where to cross and just as they’re about to do the first rehearsal, the union rep whispers something to the director and the director curses and then yells, “Lunch! Thirty minutes!”

After a rushed lunch, where the extras eat last but are expected back in the holding area for make-up and hair touch-ups first, you wait an hour or so and then they usher you back to the set. Finally, after a couple more rehearsals, the stars wander in, they shoot a 30 second scene and you’re sent back to the holding area while they light the next scene. Hours later they send the day players home along with half of the extras so they don’t have to feed them dinner and keep the ones who are wearing the most uncomfortable shoes (me) and aren’t union (also me). Fourteen and half hours after you’ve arrived and you’ve calculated your overtime to the nickel, they use you in a scene that gets cut in the editing room.

Why would anyone do this? Well, quite honestly, I don’t anymore. I write books. And guess what? Getting a book published is just like this! Except you don’t have to leave the house. The moments in the make-up trailer or on the set give you the same sort of buzz that a “send me the partial” does. The steak and lobster for lunch (yes, this really happens) is an agent offering to rep you. Being used in a scene where you might possibly, maybe, hopefully be upgraded to a speaking role (which pays a lot more and allows you to join the union) is when your book goes out on submission.

Luckily in publishing, I think you have more control over your destiny by working hard and persevering. The only thing that really helps an extra is the ability to be quiet and read a book to keep from being driven mad by other extras’ stories of the “time they almost got upgraded but they chose the person next to them because they didn’t raise their hand quickly enough when the director asked for a volunteer.”

So why am I even bringing this up? Well because lately people have been asking me if they can get a copy of my book in time for Christmas. Yeah, of course you can. Christmas 09? Or is that 2010? Probably the latter. But do you know what? I just smile because instead of worrying about the saying “Hurry up and wait”, I’m focusing on a different saying these days.

“Good things come to those who wait.”