Advanced(?) Compound Path Manipulation

Hello all, 

I am attempting to animate a letter in After Effects with a write-on effect. I know how to do it but am running into the problem that everyone runs into when doing it with scriptive letters and that problem is overlapping of strokes. 

So this A that someone signed as 2 intersections and I want to make it so there are none, as in, the path starts at where the person would naturally start writing an A, and end where it ends. So the path overlaps and does not intersect. Does that make sense?

I tried to use the scissor tool, but that would mess up the entire path and also change the bezier handles of the path. I have tried the knife tool which is not accurate enough and also led to undesirable results. I tried masking in After Effects but these intersections make it extremely difficult to make everything look right.

I want the write on effect to look good and I want to separate the letter the best way possible. What is the best way?