creative writing - Should I focus on ideas which the market enjoys, or ideas which I enjoy?

Two approaches to writing:

1. 
   

   Writing about ideas that are currently 'hot' in the market (a bit like when the Hunger Games came out, many authors quickly released books which incorporated the same set of ideas)

   
   


2. 
   

   Writing about ideas that you would enjoy (and have enjoyed) reading about.

   
   

I don't have any statistics for this claim, but I'm fairly certain that many authors are influenced by the type of books they read, and are heavily influenced by the ideas which appear in the type of books they enjoy. I can't verify this (yet) but it's certainly true for me; I enjoy reading a specific subset of dystopian fiction (one where the protagonist suffers heavy losses), and the book which I'm planning to write features this key idea heavily.

It seems to me, that, ideas which appear in books are very similar to those that appear in the books that their authors enjoy reading.

My Question: Should I write books focusing on the market's interests, or my interests?

Answer

From your either-or phrasing, I understand that you're asking whether you should write something that appears "hot", but that you personally find utterly boring. How then do you propose to write such a thing? Do you see yourself sitting there, putting drivel on a page, fighting off boredom and disgust? What joy is there in such writing? What artistry? Do you respect yourself and that which you do, if what you write is of no interest to you? How can the reader find anything attractive in a work where you, the writer, find nothing? Are you treating your reader with respect, if you treat with contempt the story you give them?

The Hunger Games, and whatever was hot before the Hunger Games, and whatever will be hot after - when they emerged, they were all new, original, they were the books their writers would have wanted to read, found interesting to write, at their core were ideas the authors enjoyed mulling over and found something new to say about.
The works that came after, and seemed like copies, these too were written with love - by authors who wanted "more of the same", and failing to find it, wrote it. They were stories inspired by the first one, a response born of love.

You cannot tell a good story, unless you enjoy telling it. You've got to respect your work and your readers; if you find your story boring, you're not respecting either. Like a chef serving something he wouldn't eat himself. So write what you find interesting. If you put your truth into your story, there will be those who, like you, find it interesting.