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

I just finished reading this book after getting the water logged version in the mail. I enjoyed it. Don Miller has a wonderful self-effacing way about his writing. You can imagine him as real and not a fictional Don Trying to create his life. Its a journey. One that takes us through his life and the telling of it in a movie and the telling of it as he lives his life and recreates it. Its also a treatise on the art of writing a good story. In fact the chapters are laid out in a formula for creating a good one. I wanted to be on this journey with him- that is a good thing.

But importantly as he grows the reader is given the chance to grow with him. We can ask the same questions along with him about what makes a good tale and a good life. But not only that if the story is not a good one we can change it. We can live into this better story through developed plot twists that I can create in the telling of who I am. As an example, Miller tells of his friend and his teenage daughter. She is dating someone that he doesn’t like and had just been caught with pot. The father is lamenting all of this when Don tells him his daughter is not living a very good story. The father goes home to think about this and comes to realize he hadn’t provided a better role for her so she just picked a story that had some fun in it. There was risk, rebellion, adventure and independence. The father says, “She was just choosing the best story available to her.” You have to read the book to find out how the father creates a better story for her. I dare to say if you have children you might want to read the book for that piece of information.

Miller goes on to tell us how he began to tell a better story for himself. One that challenged him to do and become a better person. He didn’t sell his possessions and moved himself to a mountaintop, rather he used the elements of good storytelling to shift his character (himself) away from his average life to one that had a little spark in it. He added new stories along the way and began to shift his life in a big way.

This book has been making the rounds and everyone is talking about it. The book is part screen-writing, part storytelling, mixed in with self help and a little redemption at the end. By the final chapter there is so much that you learn about yourself, and the author, that you can’t help but feel the potential to change your own life. Just begin to tell a better story about who you are in this world.

What would you change in your life story if you could?

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