In which restaurant music convinces me to write more MLP fanfic

So.

About a month ago, shortly after I'd published my very first MLP story, I went out for supper with my husband and daughter. We went to one of our favorite local pizza places, and our daughter colored on the children's menu and watched stupid YouTube videos on her tablet while my husband and I snacked on the garlic bread we'd ordered as an appetizer and talked about our day.

As we're eating, I hear that the music playing in the restaurant, inexplicably, started playing Coldplay's song "The Scientist":

Inwardly, I noted how on-the-nose the song selection was, since I already had an idea for another MLP fanfic to write, and that particular song was already inspiring it in my head before I'd even started writing it. I wasn't intending to write another fanfic so soon after finishing the first one, of course, especially since I knew I was being all "ooh look at me hitting all the Fluttercord beats in the major episodes, how original NOT"

_{Kind of ridiculous, really... when I'm writing for series that are ongoing I keep thinking I should stop doing that because I don't want to write something that would contradict future developments, but now that I'm in a show that's already finished and I don't want to write something that's already been done before... I just can't win, can I?}

So the song finishes, and a few more songs play, and we finish the bread and our daughter starts complaining that the food isn't there yet.

And then, suddenly, despite having already played Coldplay just a few songs ago, another Coldplay song starts up. And not just any Coldplay song, but one that I had listened to a lot while writing "Salvation a la Mode and a Cup of Tea", in fact... the song "Paradise":

At this point, I have to comment to my husband about how weird it is that not only did the in-restaurant radio play two Coldplay songs in relatively short order, but that they both were tied to my recent fanfic output. My husband, who does indeed notice songs piped through the restaurant walls and also indeed knows of my need to write out stories for the cartoons I watch, kind of noncommittally acknowledges the oddity.

We finally get our pizza, and we dig in, as a few more songs play.

As we're finishing... wouldn't you know it... but guess what song starts to play.

_{I should probably mention here that I didn't even really listen to Coldplay much before all this, which just makes this even weirder?}

Yep. "A Sky Full of Stars". Which was probably the biggest influence on my fic Salvation etc... that the one that was nearly on a loop as I wrote.

At this point, I told my husband that clearly this was the universe's way of telling me to start writing the next fic, any hesitations I had be damned. I think I started the "Octopus's Garden" file the next day.

There are only two things that would have made it an even more obvious sign... if it had played "Aqualung", where the title of my previous fic came from (although that song really has nothing to do with my story)... or if it had played the song that I already knew would be the title of my next fic:

But neither of those two songs are Coldplay, so I suppose it wasn't in the cards that night ;)