A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Donald Miller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2009

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 her were a character in a movie.

Years after writing his 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.

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.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson (September 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0785223398
• ISBN-13: 978-0785223399
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 4.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (414 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #387,361 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Donald Miller grew up in Houston, Texas. Leaving home at the age of 21, he traveled across the country until he ran out of money in Portland, Oregon, where he lives today.

Harvest House Publishers released his first book, PRAYER AND THE ART OF VOLKSWAGEN MAINTENANCE, in 2000. Two years later, after having audited classes at Portland's Reed College, Don wrote BLUE LIKE JAZZ, which would slowly become a NEW YORK TIMES bestseller.

In 2004 Don released SEARCHING FOR GOD KNOWS WHAT, a book about how the Gospel of Jesus explains the human personality. SEARCHING has become required reading at numerous colleges across the country. In 2005 he released THROUGH PAINTED DESERTS, the story of his and a friend's road trip across the country. Don's most recent release was a book about growing up without a father called TO OWN A DRAGON.

Don has teamed up with Steve Taylor and Ben Pearson to write the screenplay for BLUE LIKE JAZZ, which will be filmed in Portland and Nashville in 2009 and released thereafter.

Don is the founder of The Belmont Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation which is working to recruit 10,000 mentors through 1,000 churches as an answer to the crisis of fatherlessness in America.

A sought-after speaker, Don has delivered lectures to a wide range of audiences, including the Women of Faith Conference, the Veritas Forum at Harvard University, and the Veritas Forum at Cal Poly. In 2008 Don was asked to deliver the closing prayer on Monday night at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.

Don's next book, A MILLION MILES IN A THOUSAND YEARS, humorously and tenderly chronicles Don's experience with filmmakers as they edit his life for the screen, hoping to make it less boring. He then shares the principles storytellers use to make a story meaningful and exciting, exploring their effects when he applies those principles to his actual life.

Of his new book, Don says: "It might be the greatest book ever written. I don't think anybody is going to read a book again after they read my new one. I think God is proud of me. I am going to make a killing off this thing, and I'm going to use the money to go to space."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

86 of 94 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)

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"...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."

29 of 30 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
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This review is from: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life (Hardcover)

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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.

41 of 45 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
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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.