A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life [Hardcover]

Donald Miller (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Miller, the accidental memoirist who struck gold with the likable ramble Blue Like Jazz, writes about the challenges inherent in getting unstuck creatively and spiritually. After Jazz sold more than a million copies but his other books didn't follow suit, he had a classic case of writer's block. Two movie producers contacted him about creating a film out of his life, but Miller's initial enthusiasm was dampened when they concluded that his real life needed doctoring lest it be too directionless for the screen. Real stories, he learned, require characters who suffer and overcome. In desultory fashion, Miller sets out to change his own life—to be the kind of guy who seeks out his father, chases the girl and undertakes a quest. Along the way, he comes to understand God as a master storyteller who doesn't quite control where his characters are going. An unexpected bonus of this book is Miller's insights into the writing process. Readers who loved Blue Like Jazz will find here a somewhat more mature Miller, still funny as hell but more concerned about making a difference in the world than in merely commenting on it. (Oct.)
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Product Description

Full of beautiful, heart-wrenching, and hilarious stories, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years details one man's opportunity to edit his life as if he were a character in a movie.

Years after writing a best-selling memoir, Donald Miller went into a funk and spent months sleeping in and avoiding his publisher. One story had ended, and Don was unsure how to start another.

But he gets rescued by two movie producers who want to make a movie based on his memoir. When they start fictionalizing Don's life for film--changing a meandering memoir into a structured narrative--the real-life Don starts a journey to edit his actual life into a better story. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years details that journey and challenges readers to reconsider what they strive for in life. It shows how to get a second chance at life the first time around.

 

I love Donald Miller. He is a man after my own heart. -Anne Lamott, New York Times best-selling author of Traveling Mercies, Grace (Eventually), and Bird by Bird.

If someone tells you they've read this book and they "enjoyed it" or they "liked it" or they think it's a "good hook" then maybe they didn't read it - it's well written and funny and interesting and all that, but it's also disturbing. Really, really disturbing. Don is into provocative territory here, wrestling with The Story and the role each our stories play in it . . . this is very convicting, powerful, unsettling writing. I felt like this book read me more than I read it. -Rob Bell, author of Velvet Elvis

I've never been in Donald Miller's living room, but this book makes me feel that I have. The stories compel, the humor works, and Don's wisdom stealths its way on to the pages. I already want to re-read it. -Max Lucado, New York Times best-selling author of 3:16 and Fearless.

Sly, soulful, and deeply affecting, Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is an indispensable road map and travel companion for readers seeking not only to experience better stories but to live them as well. -Allan Heinberg, Executive Producer, Grey's Anatomy

Only Donald Miller can mill the glorious wreckage of the human experience for the hue of jazz and the hope that we can live out a story worth sharing.  His premise will haunt you until you set out to discover if memorable lives, like unforgettable books, often require several drafts and a loving editor. -Steve Duin, The Oregonian

In the first few chapters of Don's new book, Don got me thinking about Don and his interesting life. Then for several chapters, he got me thinking about my own life. And then for the rest of the book, I couldn't help but think about God and other people and the kind of future we're creating together. That sounds like solid evidence that this uniquely talented and sagely writer/thinker/storyteller has given us another wonderful and life-enriching reading experience. -Brian McLaren, Author, Speaker, Activist, brianmclaren.net

There are some writers who simply don't have it in them to craft an inelegant sentence. Donald Miller is one of them. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years proves in story form how stories define us even more than our genes do. Read this book for an experience of sheer beauty, or for help in living a well-storied life. -Leonard Sweet, Drew Theological School, George Fox University,
www.sermons.com

With great honesty and insight, Don Miller issues a simple and profound challenge: live a better story.  In A Million Miles in a Thousand Years Don opens up his life, struggles, triumphs, and insecurities and shows the reader how to do exactly that.  The world is full of great challenges, terrible tragedies, and overwhelming joys-there is simply too much going on to be a part of a boring story.  For anyone who knows that life should more than what we see on TV commercials and billboards, this is a book for you.  -Jim Wallis, President of Sojourners and Author of the New York Times bestseller The Great Awakening

 

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson (September 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0785213066
• ISBN-13: 978-0785213062
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (341 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #860 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

  #12 in	Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Leaders & Notable People > Religious
  #38 in	Books > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality
  #15 in	Books > Health, Mind & Body > Self-Help > Motivational

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Story About a Story About a Story, July 24, 2009

By	Crestviewer (CO, USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)

This review is from: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

"...to know there is a better story for your life and to choose something other is like choosing to die."

This is a great book. A book that's fun to read and pulled me in and whose pages flew by. A book that cracked me up and brought tears to my eyes. A book that challenged and inspired. It sounds overly dramatic and just a tad hyperbolic, but I'll look at life (and hopefully live life) a bit differently as a result of this read.

In the choppy/direct/engaging writing style of his best-selling "Blue Like Jazz" (but with some additional maturity and depth), Miller describes the experience of looking at his life as he works with others in developing a movie (loosely) based on his life. The result is a bit distressing for him (as his life is a bit boring), but the lessons from the screen-writing experience have some wonderful applications in real life (A Character is What He Does, A Good Character Listens to His Writer, The Importance of an Inciting Incident, and others). Significant life-change takes place.

Miller teaches almost incidentally as you watch him learn and grow, and his candor about the pain and awkwardness and joy of the process is endearing and appreciated. And encouraging.

There's a lot to chew on in "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years," and I'm not quite with Miller in all of his rifts and conclusions, but I'm grateful that he shared his journey with me.

"...in living a great story, we defy a dark force propagating what I believe to be a lie, that a human life is not worth living, that the story you have living within you is not worth living."

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Your life... Your story... boring? or Interesting?, July 28, 2009

By	P. Hamm "p-squared" (Western Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Your life is basically you... telling a story... and for most of us, it's not a very good one. It doesn't have the pain, conflict, resolution, and joy we'd like it to have. In fact, for most of us, we're just trying to stay comfortable and boring.

This is exactly the temptation that Don Miller is fighting against in this marvelous book. Through loves found and lost, family lost and found, and dreams pursued, lost and shattered, Miller takes us through his story even as he's "re-writing it" to tell on film. This book is a great companion to his book "Blue Like Jazz" and although it may be a little less engaging than that former work, in all honesty, it reads and feels like it might make an even better movie than "Blue Like Jazz" is going to make.

Find a way to tell an interesting story with your life, and make a positive difference in the world around you. This book challenged my thinking that way, I hope it challenges you, too. All in all, a gutsy, honest, warts-and-all memoir that is actually so naked in its honesty that I'm surprised a Christian publisher like Nelson took it on. Miller's decisions, lifestyle, and perhaps beliefs won't be everybody's cup of tea, but it's good to be challenged to understand my own decisions, lifestyle and beliefs. Miller does a great job of that.

It's been too long coming, but well worth the wait.

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Donald Miller is back, August 3, 2009

By	Scandalous Sanity (Texas) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)

This review is from: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Donald Miller was in a funk. He had written a bestseller, and was now a much sought after speaker. He was accomplished. But for some reason, all of his success didn't bring the climatic ending that he was hoping for. He felt lost. Then he received a call from two men who wanted to turn his book, Blue Like Jazz, into a movie. Miller was unsure of how to turn his book, part memoir and part collection of essays, into a movie. So the two men came to visit him, and teach him about story.


From there Miller uses the elements of story to describe how people can paint a different picture of their life. Miller realizes that the majority of his life has been spent watching stories and making them up. He decides that he will turn his life into a story worth watching, rather than spending his time making up fictional stories.


Miller once again muses on his life, faith, and the human condition, all the while telling the story of his move from writing stories to living them. When he learns that characters are their actions, he resolves to do things with more meaning. He hikes in the Andes, asks out a girl he likes, and eventually meets his father for the first time ever. The comparisons he makes between stories and real life are phenomenal. I found myself reading through certain sections over and over, trying to grasp the depth of the prose. Some of his thoughts that are complex, taking a while to jog their way through your mind; others are simple and profound in their brevity.


For those that have read Miller's previous books, a couple of things will be familiar: his dry sense of humor and superb writing are prevalent throughout the book. What is new is hope. Miller no longer writes like a person wandering through his journey in life honestly searching for answers. He now writes like a person wandering through his journey in life honestly searching for answers, full of hope that one day they will be answered.