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

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