For background, I'm a published author who's been writing and editing in various ways since 1998. So, I'm looking back at writing career that is now approaching a full quarter of a century long (most of which is non-fiction - my fiction career was killed by the Lord of the Rings glut in the early 2000s, and never really recovered).
(Realizing that this might require some explanation, back in the early 2000s the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies were a massive hit, and fantasy publishers started buying up everything they could get their hands on. If you ended up on the right side of that, you got in. If you ended up on the wrong side of that, the response time for AGENTED submissions - and I was agented at the time - went from months to years. I finally gave up on the big publishers and the system when I found myself wanting to ask my agent how many decades I was going to have to wait for a reply. Let's just say that there was a time that I would wholeheartedly suggest trying the numbers game of submitting books to the big publishers...and today I would be very reluctant to suggest that.)
And my answer is actually...no, I wouldn't. I would do some additional editing before publication of one of my previously unpublished novels, but I would not even consider doing a rewrite. Too much of value would be lost.
For example, I have two serials on Tapas right now. The first is Magus Draconum (https://tapas.io/series/Magus-Draconum/info), which I wrote at the beginning of my career around the age of 23-24 and ended up on the wrong side of the glut. It received a couple of edits over the years, but that's about it. I uploaded it to play around with the platform while I learned how to use it before I launched my main project, Re:Apotheosis.
Re:Apotheosis (https://tapas.io/series/ReApotheosis/info) was written this year in a two-month marathon at the age of 45. It encompasses a quarter of a century of experience in both the creative industry, pop culture commentary, life experience, and my own personal growth as a writer.
Without doubt, when it comes to style, Re:Apotheosis is the better written of the two. My prose is more refined, the characters probably better developed, the emotional beats better earned, and the pacing and structure are just smoother. BUT...
...there are risks I take in Magus Draconum that I would NEVER take today. Character and storytelling decisions that I know better than to make after over 20 years in this field. There's one scene coming up that, as a father, I would be physically incapable of writing (let's just say that those mature content warnings are not there for show). And that gives the story a level of rawness and vitality that Re:Apotheosis will never reach. The story works as it does BECAUSE, not knowing any better, I took those risks. If I were to rewrite Magus Draconum, those qualities would be lost. It's just not a story that 45 year-old me would tell in the first place.
That said, there are parts of both stories that should hit the reader like a ton of bricks when they read it, and Re:Apotheosis is not a story that 24 year-old me could have ever put on the page - it needs. But it's an important thing to remember when you're thinking about rewriting old work - yes, there's nothing stopping you from doing it, but you're not the same storyteller you were back when you wrote it. The decisions you would make now are not necessarily going to make it better.