Why I’m Not Rewriting My Debut Novel | Let It Fall

There was a time I swore I would. I even told people.

After Let It Fall was published, I thought it was perfect. I couldn’t read it for the 98th time, so I decided to hit publish. But after some time passed and some reviews poured in, I promised myself I’d return to it someday. Clean it up. Cut the fat. Smooth the pacing. Fix the typos. Add all the things I didn’t know how to do the first time.

But now, standing where I am, after working in a publishing house and with more experience, more clarity, and maybe just a little more softness toward the girl who wrote it… Now I know. I’m not rewriting Let It Fall. Not ever.

I wrote it when I was zero.

No job. No savings. No emotional safety net. No editor. No industry friend telling me what to fix or how to structure it. No one to go through the book. No one to design a cover or teach me how to navigate KDP. Just a Word document and a version of myself that was bleeding onto the page because she didn’t know what else to do with the pain.

There was no plan. There was just Xavier, standing in the dark with a knife. Giselle, unable to cry. And Chris, the light I needed but couldn’t find anywhere else, waiting in the background, loving her anyway.

It was not polished. It was not perfect. But it was mine. And it was all I had.

I know it’s flawed. I know.

There are scenes I’d handle differently now. Some chapters stretch longer than they need to. Some dialogues I’d like to clean up. Some switching of tones happens. There were moments I didn’t know how to pace or breathe or trust myself to slow down. But that’s because I was surviving while writing it. I remember the words pouring out of me. The tears falling down my cheek.

“It broke me. It crippled me. It left me to the mercy of self-harm because nothing else helped. Not even you.”
— Xavier

There’s no editor’s pen in the world that could’ve revised what I was living through. And that’s why I won’t touch it.

I didn’t write it to be read.

I wrote it to survive.

Some people read Let It Fall and see Chris as the sad boy in the background. But I know better. I wrote him because I needed someone in my life to stay, even when I was unreachable. I wrote him because I was Giselle. Because I’d been Xavier.

“Loving you is not a transaction. I will always be here for you even if you don’t love me back, Giselle. Loving you is a part of me.”
— Chris

Chris stayed. Even when she didn’t ask. Even when she was breaking. Even when she forgot how to speak.

“I don’t know how to feel anymore. I keep trying, but it’s like something in me broke. I can’t put it back together.”
— Giselle

That quote still makes my hands tremble.

Because it was me. It was my voice.

This story is a snapshot.

Let It Fall is messy. It’s jagged. It reads like someone holding on by a thread, because that’s exactly what it was.

“So, she accepted the grief as it flooded her. She let it consume her and understood that this was the first step of the ladder toward healing.”
— Narration

I didn’t know what healing looked like when I wrote that line. I only knew what drowning felt like.

And if I rewrote the book now, with my steadier hands and clearer mind, I’d lose that version of me. And she deserves to exist. She deserves to be read and remembered. She wrote a book when she had nothing else.

So no, I won’t rewrite it.

I’ll leave the typos in the places where I ran out of breath. I’ll leave the pacing where my grief dictated it. I’ll leave Xavier’s hopelessness and Giselle’s refusal to see what was in front of her and Chris’s unwavering presence exactly as they are.

“He draped his coat over his arm and watched her walk away with one hand holding her clutch, the other holding up her gown from the side. He let his smile fall, feeling the tightness of his chest grow. Letting go of the breath he’d been holding, his lips tucked down, tears blurring his vision, and he felt his heart snap inside his chest.”

That scene didn’t come from imagination. It came from memory. I remembered what it felt like pretending to smile and counting minutes when you’d be allowed to let your lips tuck downward. I remembered the exact moment you let out that long-held breath and feel the crack inside your chest. I remembered the exhaustion of trying to hold on just long enough for the other person to feel okay.

And if that’s not enough reason to leave it untouched, I don’t know what is.

Let It Fall is not a love story. It’s a story about what love looks like when everything else is falling apart. And I don’t want to change a single word of it.

Not because it’s perfect. But because it’s me.