How We Operate Version 3 – Author’s Note

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My Dearest Readers: 

Dearest Readers,

I wanted to drop in and give another update on what’s going on with HWO since my last AN to back on January 25th, and perhaps rant a little about what’s happened so far at the end of this note. First, let me start by saying that I FINALLY finished all of the prep work needed in order for me start rewriting the third and final version (V.3) a couple of weeks ago, and have started the actual rewriting process.

I will be posting the third version on AO3. I honestly feel that Ao3 is just the easiest platform for a story this large, which is why I’m going in that direction. That being said, I’m going back and forth on how I want to structure the Arcs/the story as a whole, and would really appreciate your opinion on the two scenarios below:

• Post all Arc 1, 2 & 3 in one giant How We Operate fic (this was how I posted the original version on Ao3) – if I do it this way, I won’t be posting the chapters until all the arcs are finished so as to avoid long gaps where a chapter might not come out due to real life things.
• Create a Series on Ao3 for How We Operate and post Arc 1, 2 and 3 in their own separate fics – if I do it this way, I actually would expect to have Arc 1 published on Ao3 by the end of March.

Now for my rant because OMG I really just want to vent about it

Surprisingly, the prep part of this was a lot more work than I thought it would be because of how different the original version (V.1) is from my 2nd version (V.2). Basically I did an extremely shitty thing when I decided to drop off the face of the Earth 7 years ago, and for those of you that I sent the original copy to back when I had no intentions of picking this up again–you have my deepest apologies for all the confusion I threw at you (i.e., not telling you where to pick back up, sending a PDF version that was 800k words/1,000+ pages, being confusing as fuck)

For those that aren’t aware–V.2 leaves off right in the middle of material/chapters that weren’t in the V.1 story, which was 42 chapters long as opposed to the version on here. Also, V.2 leaves off in the middle Arc 2 whereas V.1 leaves off in Arc 3. In order for me to successfully get V.3 off the ground, I needed to get into an organized mind set given the sheer size of this story. I had to go through the painstaking process of picking through my original copy to find the best place to merge it with V.2, and after that was done, I needed to create a new outline off my old notes so that I’ll be able to tie new material from V.2 with V.1. to ULTIMATELY create the new material for V.3.

Got that done. Next came the process of getting all the chapters from V.2 (everything on this website) and the chapters from V.1 (the ones I actually needed from Arc 2 and 3) into google docs so I can start rewriting them/merging the stories together. That process was pretty easy until it came time for me to integrate the chapters from my original copy—which was literal hell on Earth because I only have a PDF version of it thanks to Ao3. I didn’t know that when you try to copy and paste a PDF into a word doc, it will stitch all the paragraphs together. Not an issue unless the doc you’re trying to edit/reorganize is 800,000 words and a bajillion pages. FORTUNATELY I did a free trial of adobe pro and converted it to word and got everything organized/separated.