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A writer posting as Groff says he has completed two unpublished works he calls novellas: one of about 15,000 words and another of about 40,000. In an October 31, 2026, blog post, he described using groff to typeset both and said the longer draft took 10 days, compared with more than seven months for the first.
A technical blogger who writes under the name Groff says he has completed two unpublished novellas, using the typesetting system groff to produce PDFs of the works. In a blog post published October 31, 2026, he described the projects as a personal change of direction as well as a technical exercise; he said he does not plan to publish either story or share them privately.
The writer estimates that his first story is about 50 A5 pages and 15,000 words; the second is about 120 pages and 40,000 words. He notes that the two lengths sit close to the edges of what is commonly called a novella, with the first perhaps too short and the second slightly too long. These are his own estimates and classification, not a formal publishing designation.
The time spent drafting differed sharply. The first story took more than seven months, while he wrote the longer one in 10 days. He says he began reading fiction more regularly around July 2025 and had read about 30 novels since then. He presents that reading habit as the path that led him to try writing fiction himself, despite having found school writing assignments unpleasant.
Both works were typeset with groff, a full typesetting system commonly associated with producing Unix and Linux manual pages. The blogger says he made a small macro package for the books, with basic formatting for chapter headings and paragraphs, and added page-number and footer handling. He reports that generating the 50-page PDF took about 700 milliseconds and the 120-page PDF about 1.6 seconds on his 13.5-year-old computer, including preprocessing.
A Manual-Page Tool for Fiction
The post offers a practical example of a command-line typesetting system being adapted for long-form fiction, rather than only its familiar role in technical documentation. Groff’s account may interest writers who prefer plain-text files, a lightweight toolchain and control over the production of a print-ready PDF. It also shows that a simple manuscript layout can be handled with a small set of custom macros, rather than a large desktop publishing application.
The report is a personal account, not a test comparing groff with other publishing software. The writer praises its speed and output, but gives no independent measurements of print quality, accessibility or ease of use. The stories themselves will not be available for readers to assess: he explicitly says he will not publish them or send them privately.
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From Reading to Typesetting
The writer says fiction had previously been a slow and infrequent pursuit for him, unlike technical reading. Around July 2025, he began reading books that had been sitting at home and found himself enjoying them more than expected. He estimates that he has read about 30 novels since July 2025, at varying speeds, and says the shift made attempting his own stories feel possible.
The October post focuses less on the stories’ plots than on how he produced their pages. It introduces groff as a complete typesetting system and describes a compact setup for flowing prose: separate files for chapters, a few formatting macros, and additional page-layout work for footers and page numbers. The post’s contents also list discussion of German hyphenation, Markdown preprocessing, Vim, Goyo, Git and a downloadable demo archive, though the supplied account does not provide full details for every topic.
“I recently finished my second “novella.””
— The writer, in the October 31, 2026, blog post
Stories Stay Out of Reach
The blogger has not shared the manuscripts, so their contents, editorial state and intended audience are unknown. It is also unclear whether he considers the works finished in a literary or revision sense; the post confirms that he completed drafts but does not describe editing, feedback or plans to revise them. His use of “novella” is qualified, and the post does not state a word-count standard for the form.
The account provides no independent confirmation of the writing timelines, page counts or PDF generation speeds. Those figures should be understood as the author’s own measurements and estimates. The supplied material also does not establish whether the demo archive listed in the post remains available or what its full contents include.
No Release Planned
The writer says he will not publish either story and will not distribute them privately. That leaves the groff workflow, rather than the fiction, as the part of the project available for public discussion. The post’s table of contents points to further technical detail about formatting, page traps, text preprocessing and editing tools, but it does not announce a publication schedule or a new writing project.
Readers seeking a follow-up may find one in the author’s technical blog or any materials he chooses to share there. For now, there is no stated date for further posts, no planned release of the novellas and no confirmed next milestone.
Key Questions
What has the writer completed?
He says he has completed two unpublished stories that he informally calls novellas: one about 15,000 words and one about 40,000.
Will the novellas be published?
No. The writer says he will not publish them or send them privately.
What is groff?
Groff is a typesetting system commonly used to format Unix and Linux manual pages. The blogger says he used it, with a small custom macro package, to make PDFs of both stories.
How long did the writing take?
According to the writer, the first story took more than seven months; the longer second story took 10 days. The post does not explain whether those periods included breaks or revision.
Is “novella” a definite classification for the works?
Not in the post. The writer describes both lengths as near the boundaries of the form: he says the first may be too short and the second slightly too long. He does not cite a formal word-count rule.
Source: movq.de
