A.J. Verdelle (author of The Good Negress) interviewed by Nancy Middleton in Glimmer Train (Fall 1998):

Interviewer: I love that James Baldwin quote you cited during your talk: “You don’t get the book you want. You get the book you get.” You spoke about finding the passionate author of a piece.

Verdelle: Yes. Where’s the juice? What’s happening here? What’s good? What is my favorite thing? Having looked this over again and knowing that this is now some sort of story, in whatever shape it’s in, what part of it would I not relinquish in any way? This is why my story kept changing, I think.

So I wrote the whole thing about Margarete, and it was not good. It was not what I wanted. And I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had wasted, in my mind, a lot of time. So that was tough. But I kept going. This is another thing that I try to talk to people about: understanding that line of observation. Just because you observe something doesn’t make it deep. Just because I knew it was wrong doesn’t make that the deep thing. The deep thing is the story that is still waiting for my attention. So until I figured out what to do, I had to keep working. . .

We want to look for where the passion is in the work, because that is going to be the anchor, that is going to be the basis of the mountain that is built...  

. . .

Where's the juice? Where is the passion in a creative work, whether it be art or music or a novel? If you could only retain one thing, what one element of this work would you not give up? Where is the essence?

After all the invested time, after stripping away the elements that can be stripped away without affecting the power of the piece, what is left is its essence –- the passion, the juice, the mountain on which the work must be rebuilt. Everything else, no matter how much time (blood sweat and tears) went into it, can be, needs to be, thrown away.

What we're craving is that juice. Where the power comes from. That's what we want, to see, or read, or listen to. And learn from.

. . .

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