Story and Life Update, October 8, 2018

Hey guys, Fates here again with another update on Change the Heart.
I'm redoing a lot of work with Chapter 14, and while this is where I would normally let you guys see a preview of what's going on, the current issue is that I'm not really happy with how it starts out. See, the outline originally had this taking part immediately after the events of Chapter 13, with the gang in hot pursuit of the Changelings, Heart Shield being reckless and issues happening with the ship that all get them to the next island. However, my first three initial drafts of this chapter veered away from that far quicker than I'd have liked, and I then toyed around in the next two drafts with something similar to how Chapter 12 went, where the chapter picks up in a different spot and the majority of the chapter is spent showing you guys how we got there. I liked that for a while, but then started to run dry on the "how" part of the chapter, because things have changed enough that I have now made up three completely different outlines for this chapter and that just became a huge mess. I've currently scrapped all of those and am going to try doing a combination of the original outline and one of the later drafts, because I kind of like the idea, especially for this particular chapter, of dropping the audience right into the thick of it and trying to get things pieced together, however that may change and I might just stick with the original outline for it.
The main issue with all of this is due to the nature of the island the gang finds themselves on. Remember back with the dragons when it was mentioned in passing that there were some dangerous islands? This is one of them. The original plan back then was to have about seven to ten different islands the group would end up at after Dragon Isle, each one varying in whether it was dangerous or if it was a more peaceful island, with some of the islands being like the one with the phantoms that were just downright deadly. I've cut out a lot of what had originally been planned, but kept the phantom and this upcoming island as the "dangerous" ones because my whole idea originally with the phantom was just to have an excuse to have Heart Shield tell a story that got across to his friends his exact views on his own life and their current mission while also trying to test my hand at writing horror. We all saw that didn't pan out too well, and I do plan to come back to that at a later date and completely revise that to have the story told better and to come up with one for Clover Patch (hers was always meant to be the story as to how the island became cursed and her part in it, but I couldn't come up with anything that worked and the deadline to get the story out was coming too close for me to feel confident just throwing something out there, so her story got cut altogether). I feel like that's one of the weaker chapters of the story and what took so long with that one was mainly that I wasn't happy with it and didn't want to write it out, but I'd already taken out the other islands I'd considered a few years earlier along with my notes on them, and most of the work was already done so I needed to put that out.
This chapter is falling into a similar situation, but for a different reason.
Chapter 14 is where some big information comes to light, that can ONLY come to light in this specific circumstance because everything just lined up exactly right. If even one thing got changed, the gang wouldn't have the information they needed in order to get them to the rest of the story. Trust me, I have tried to write around this chapter and for as random an entry as it is, it's actually very central to the plot. Without spoiling too much, Chapter 14 lands the gang on the island of sleep, where dreams are connected and strong. This is important because by this point, they haven't been able to get in touch with the mainland for quite some time, and we all know a certain princess with the power to enter dreams, which will land them some big news from back home, but also land them some unexpected news on the path going forward. As such, as much as I would like to skip this chapter, it's ultimately integral to the story because of the information they're given, and I just need to figure out a way to start it and get to that information that I like.
So that's where the story stands so far, however there are some other complications that are impacting my work on this, all relating to my personal life. I'll try not to get too into it because I know part of it is about some very sensitive topics that I'm pretty sure aren't allowed to be written about on here, and while I'd like to link you to some social media posts about it, most of the other platforms I'm on have outright banned the biggest topic altogether, so I'm left with vaguely hinting at it in a way that should get the point across without crossing any lines this site may have. If I do cross a line, I welcome any moderators to notify me and I will do my best to change the wording of it to let you all know what I've been struggling to deal with without breaking any rules. Worst comes to the worst, I'll take my chances on a social media post explaining some of it and point you guys to it.
But basically there's been a lot of issues that have been stacking up and my ability to cope with them all has been steadily declining, which all came to a head a few weeks ago and led me to try to take the easy way out of everything because I'm just tired of having to deal with all of it. The stress built up to a point where I ended up weighing my options of was it worth it to stick through things or not and I decided it wasn't, and set a date for myself. As I'm here writing this, obviously that didn't end up coming through as planned, but the point is that I decided to take the easy way out, to break a long-kept promise to a dearly departed friend, and that's still something that might end up happening.
I want to thank everyone here for their support with the story and apologize again for all the delays in getting everything out. I don't want to leave a story that I don't like for people to read, so the time I take to work on this, and when I do manage to find time to work on this, is all spent trying to get the things I dislike with the story out so that I can have the best possible version up for everyone.