Give Me Your Honest Opinion

The three stages an author goes through when receiving criticism are as follows:

1. Supervillainy: "How dare they malign my work? Clearly they are incapable of comprehending the true magnitude of my talent! When I've reached the top of the bestseller list, they'll crawl over each other to beg my forgiveness -- crawl, I tell you! Mwa ha ha ha!"
2. Melodrama: "How could I have been blind to all of these flaws? This book is a failure, from start to finish! I'm nothing but a no-talent hack with a word processor and delusions of grandeur! I must now drown my existential pain with vokda/chocolate/Nethack/etc." (Note: the author does not condone the use of Nethack for purposes other than for which it was originally designed: verifying that your computer is capable of displaying the entire ASCII character set.)
3. Progress: "Hmm ... I think I see how I can address these shortcomings while staying true to my vision for this book. The book will be richer and more complete as a result."

I've gotten pretty good at speeding through phase 1 so that I can spend more time savoring phase 2. If anyone out there has successfully reached phase 3, send me a postcard and let me know how the weather is up there.