If you saved it in a newer format like .odt, then you can try to change the extension to .zip, then try 'uncompressing the file.' This seems really ridiculous, but you'll find that most modern documents are actually a collection of smaller text files in a different shell.

To do this, you'll have to set your operating system to show file extensions (in windows, this is an advanced setting). Then, change the file extension to .zip.

You can, for older formats, just force the file to open in a text editor like notepad (or notepad++). You should be able to extract the text, though it won't look as nice.

In the future, I do my free writes in Evernote or Google Doc. If you need more help, send it along somehow to us and we can help you future.