Craft trends – whether related to jewelry designing, paperarts, or needle-work – can’t help but catch your eye if you are even a little involved in the world of crafting. In fact, I think there is nothing wrong with at least being aware of trends, and sometimes we can use these to our advantage. With craft writing, this is especially true because, obviously, if you are pitching a book topic idea, it is important that you pitch one that is hot or even better about to get hot.

However, there is a danger when a topic is so hot that it is over done, badly over done, as in fried, mutilated, destroyed, utterly, well….I think you get where this is going.

I’ll give you an example.

On a recent bookstore trip with my DH, I was browsing through the new fiction table and discovered a plethora of Jane Austen knock off novels. Some of these attempted to retell one of her novels, only using a different character’s point of view. Some of these attempted to continue the plot of one of her novels. All of them are attempting to catch the Jane Austen gravy train that has picked up tremendous speed lately.

As an avid Janite, part of me loves the fact that she is everywhere. Finally, the world now sees how talented she was. Hey, it’s about damn time! And I love the fact that I can easily locate and purchase Jane related items such as a Jane Austen Address Book, Jane Austen Note Cards, and a Jane Austen Mouse Pad. (Yup, I bought them all!)

However, after getting a cup of tea at the bookstore’s coffee shop and browsing through a few of these J. Austen inspired books that I was seriously thinking of purchasing, I realized that while these authors may honestly hope to capture the essence of Jane, the quality of the books (at least the ones I briefly looked at) was lacking.

In one text, as I turned to the first page of the first chapter with the hope of getting caught up in the story right away, I was slapped in the face with a sentence fragment in the second sentence of the text! And, this was not a fragment used for emphasis. This was just a plain old mistake that no one took the time to fix. Another text promised to offer Darcy’s point of view of the love story of P&P, but instead, I saw a boring narrative and little dialogue. When I finally dug out some dialogue, it was surrounded by the first person (“I”) of someone other than Darcy. So, okay, how can that be his point of view, folks?

Maybe it was due to a lack of talent or passion or more than likely it was due to poor editing because there was a rush to get them to print and on the “new fiction” table at Barnes & Noble, but whatever the reason, this trend has taken a turn for the worse. These are not cute little note cards that you address to special friends who will totally appreciate them; these are just sloppily crafted texts that should not have been published.

…Rant over….

Returning to my original point now – This is an example of what can happen when artists get so caught up in trends that they don’t listen to their own voice. As a result, they end up crafting crap because they too are hoping to get on board whatever gravy train the trend is on, and of course, sooner or later this turns into a train wreck.

I’m not saying to completely ignore craft trends, and from my own experience I understand how easy it is to get caught up in a trend that seems to be a “sure thing.” (I’m remembering the whole “angel” trend years ago, and yes, I still have a lot of angel charms stuck in a drawer around her somewhere.) But, if you do decide to indulge, make sure you are still focusing on what you want to create as well, that you aren’t giving over completely just to ride the train for a while because you really can lose yourself, and ultimately, you will not be happy with the work you create.