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In a blog post published Oct. 31, 2026, the author says they have completed two unpublished works they describe as novellas: one about 15,000 words and another about 40,000. The post focuses on using groff, a typesetting system commonly associated with Linux manual pages, to format them, and recounts a sharp difference in writing time: more than seven months for the first and 10 days for the second.
A technical blogger has described completing two unpublished novellas and typesetting them with groff, the text-formatting system commonly used to produce Linux manual pages. In a post published Oct. 31, the writer said the shorter work is about 15,000 words and took more than seven months, while a roughly 40,000-word second work took 10 days.
The author estimates the first story at about 50 A5 pages and the second at about 120 pages. They caution that the works sit near the edges of the novella category: the first may be a little short and the second a little long, by the author’s account. Both remain private. The writer said they would not publish either work or send them privately, describing the latter as effectively much the same as publication.
The post is chiefly a practical account of typesetting with groff, rather than an announcement of a release. The author says groff can produce book-quality output while remaining small and fast. On a 13.5-year-old computer, the 50-page document takes about 700 milliseconds to generate, and the 120-page document about 1.6 seconds; those figures include preprocessing.
For the layout, the writer created a small macro package and organized the text into separate chapter files. The simple setup covers chapter headings and paragraph formatting, with further sections addressing page numbers, headers, spacing between sentences, German hyphenation, Markdown preprocessing and editing in Vim. The supplied source excerpt ends partway through the discussion of page-footer traps, so it does not establish the full contents or final conclusions of the post.
A Personal Case for Lightweight Typesetting
The report offers a concrete example of a writer using a traditional Unix typesetting tool for long-form fiction, outside its best-known role in producing technical documentation. The author’s account may interest readers who want to understand how plain-text tools can support a book-length project, though it is a personal workflow rather than a tested comparison of publishing software.
The writing timeline is also striking as a detail of the author’s experience: the longer manuscript was completed in 10 days, after the first took more than seven months. The post does not explain the reason for that difference or claim that groff made the faster draft possible. It instead connects the attempt to a renewed interest in fiction reading, making the story relevant as a personal account of taking up writing as well as a technical tutorial.
There is no public release for readers to assess the fiction itself. The immediate value lies in the disclosed process: a compact set of formatting macros, a command-line workflow and a fast PDF build, alongside the author’s candid admission that groff’s more complicated features remain a work in progress.
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Reading Led to Writing Fiction
The author says they began reading books that had been sitting at home around July 2025. Fiction had previously been a slow and often unappealing activity for them, aside from technical reading. Since that change, they estimate they have read about 30 novels, with individual books taking anywhere from a few days to three months. The post does not provide a list of titles or independently verify that estimate; it is the writer’s account of their reading habits.
The author presents writing the stories as a natural next step after that renewed interest. They also describe a contrast with school, where writing unrelated to technical subjects such as mathematics and physics had felt difficult. The post does not describe the plots, intended readership or literary influences of either manuscript.
Groff and troff are text-processing and typesetting tools used to produce formatted documents; groff is commonly encountered through Unix-like systems’ manual pages. The writer says the tool appealed because it is relatively small and fast while still capable of producing polished output. Their post applies it to a modest, text-focused book layout rather than a document with illustrations, lists or cross-references.
“I recently finished my second “novella.””
— The author, in the Oct. 31, 2026, blog post
The Manuscripts Remain Private
Neither story is available for independent review, and the author says neither will be published or sent privately. Their subjects, plots, titles and intended audiences are not given in the source material. The word “novella” is also used loosely by the writer, who says the first manuscript may be too short and the second slightly too long to fit the category.
The post describes the author’s own word counts, page estimates, production times and reading history. The excerpt provided does not include independent measurements or a full account of the formatting package, and it cuts off during the page-number discussion. It is consequently unclear from the supplied material how the finished PDFs handle all layout issues, or what further work remains in the complete tutorial.
No Release Is Planned
There is no public launch, publication date or distribution plan for either manuscript: the author has explicitly said they will not release them. For readers, the next available development is any continuation of the groff walkthrough on the writer’s blog, including the technical sections that follow the provided excerpt. The source material does not state whether the author plans a third story or intends to revise either existing one.
Key Questions
What is the news about “Novellas with Groff”?
A technical blogger has written about completing two unpublished works described as novellas and formatting them with groff. The post combines personal writing history with a practical typesetting account.
How long are the two works?
The author estimates the first at about 15,000 words and 50 A5 pages, and the second at about 40,000 words and 120 pages. The page counts are the author’s estimates.
Will the stories be published?
No. The author says they will not publish either work or send them privately. No release plan is described.
What is groff?
Groff is a text-processing and typesetting system commonly used to generate Unix-like operating systems’ manual pages. The author used it to produce PDFs of the two manuscripts.
How long did each manuscript take to write?
According to the writer, the first took more than seven months and the longer second work took 10 days. The post does not explain what caused the difference.
Source: movq.de
