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A writer who blogs under the name Groff says he has completed two novellas, one about 15,000 words and the other about 40,000. In a post published Oct. 31, 2026, he said both are private and described using the groff typesetting system to produce them.
A technical blogger writing under the name Groff says he has completed a second novella, adding to an earlier work, but says neither is available to readers. In a post published Oct. 31, 2026, he described the manuscripts’ lengths and the software he used to typeset them, offering a rare account of a private writing project rather than announcing a book release.
Groff put the first manuscript at about 50 A5 pages and 15,000 words, and the second at roughly 120 pages and 40,000 words. He called both works novellas while acknowledging that they sit near the edges of the category: the first may be too short and the second slightly too long, depending on the definition used. The source gives no publisher, title, or publication plan for either work.
The post focuses on the mechanics of making a book-length document with groff, a typesetting system often used to produce Unix and Linux manual pages. Groff said he wrote a small set of macros for chapter headings and paragraphs, worked from separate files for each chapter, and generated PDFs at A5 page size. He said producing the shorter document took about 700 milliseconds on his computer and the longer one about 1.6 seconds, including preprocessing.
He also described a sharp difference in how long the manuscripts took to write: more than seven months for the first and 10 days for the second. Those are his reported writing times; the post does not provide a breakdown of daily hours, revision, or whether the drafts were edited after completion.
A Private Project With Public Methods
The news is less a literary release than an account of an unexpected change in one writer’s habits. Groff said he had previously found fiction reading slow and often boring, but began reading books that had been sitting in his apartment around July 2025. He estimates that he has read about 30 novels since then. That reading led him to try writing fiction himself, even though he recalls school writing assignments as an unpleasant experience outside technical subjects.
For readers interested in independent writing or older Unix tools, the post offers practical detail without making the manuscripts public. Groff’s account shows how a compact typesetting workflow can be used for extended prose, while its stated limits are clear: he has not offered the stories for sale, shared them privately, or said that he plans to publish them. The technical explanation is the material readers can inspect; the fiction itself remains unavailable.
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From Reading to Typesetting
Groff described the writing as following a period of increased fiction reading. He said he started reading books already in his apartment sometime around July 2025 and found the experience more enjoyable than expected. Before that, he said, he read at most about one fiction book a year. His estimate of roughly 30 novels since July 2025 is a personal count, not an independently verified total.
The choice of groff fits the technical focus of his blog, according to the post. He described it as relatively small and fast while capable of producing high-quality output, and said he made a small macro package rather than relying on a larger book-production setup. The report includes examples involving page footers, page numbers, spacing, and preprocessing, but also flags unfinished items and says he has not mastered every aspect of the typesetting system.
“I recently finished my second “novella.””
— Groff, in his Oct. 31 blog post
No Release Plans or Manuscript Access
The post does not identify the works by title, describe their plots, or say whether either manuscript has been revised or shared with an editor. Groff says he will not publish or privately send the stories, and gives no indication that this position may change. It is also unclear what word-count definition he uses for the reported totals or how much drafting time went into each project day by day.
The label “novella” is not settled by the post. Groff himself says the shorter work is probably below and the longer one slightly above a boundary, but he does not name a specific standard. The figures should be read as his descriptions of the manuscripts, not as a formal classification or independently checked count.
Technical Notes, Not a Book Launch
Groff’s post proceeds through his typesetting workflow, including formatting, footers, page numbers, inter-sentence spacing, German hyphenation, text editing, and version control. He also points to a downloadable archive named demo-book.tar.gz as part of the technical demonstration. The post’s stated focus is explaining how he assembled the documents, not preparing the fiction for readers.
No publication date, publisher, or next literary milestone is announced. Unless Groff changes his stated position, the novellas will remain private; what readers can follow is any further technical explanation he chooses to publish on his blog.
Key Questions
Has Groff published either novella?
No. Groff says he will not publish either story or send them privately, according to his Oct. 31, 2026, post.
How long are the two manuscripts?
Groff estimates the first at about 15,000 words and 50 A5 pages, and the second at about 40,000 words and 120 pages.
What software did he use to typeset them?
He used groff, a typesetting system commonly associated with Unix and Linux manual pages, and wrote a small macro package for the documents.
How long did the writing take?
Groff says the first manuscript took more than seven months and the longer second one took 10 days. The post does not explain how much time he spent writing each day or revising.
Source: movq.de
