In one of my English classes, we studied Richard Powers' "Galatea 2.2," which dealt with metafiction. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, metafiction is defined as "Fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions (esp. naturalism) and narrative techniques; a fictional work in this genre or style" (OED). What that basically means is that metafiction breaks the fourth wall and draws attention to its own status as fiction. Based on that idea of erasing the barriers between fiction and reality, metafiction is a mainstay of cultural capital, with the similarly-associated phrase "meta" holding a significant role in movies, television, and daily interaction. Basically, I'm telling you all of this because this Odyssey article about writing an Odyssey article is, like, so meta. So here are the 15 stages of writing an Odyssey article:

1. The "Oh, right, my article is due tomorrow" stage

2. The "What am I going to write about?" stage

3. The "Well, that's an idea, but it's not a good idea" stage

4. The "Oh, awesome, I could write about puppies" stage

5. The "But are puppies relatable?" stage

6. The "Of course they are, they're puppies!" stage

7. The "Wait, some people like cats. I can't just limit it to puppies" stage

8. The "I've been writing about puppies for, like, four stages" stage

9. The "Maybe I could write an Open Letter To..." stage

10. The "Jk, been there, done that" stage

11. The "Alright, I'll just write about writing. Now I need GIFs" stage

12. The "Searching Giphy but only finding weird things" stage

13. The "Alright, this works, I guess" stage

14. The "I have to insert and center and cite the sources on all of these pictures" stage

15. The "I'm done. I literally can't even" stage

16. The "Hit submit for editing" stage