After being nominated for Grammy awards in four different categories for the album Nick of Time, Raitt went for a creative retreat in Northern California to begin work on Luck of the Draw. "I did it on purpose to see if I could come up with anything," Raitt said in 1991. "In case I won, I wanted to make sure that I had done some writing and didn't feel that Nick of Time was a fluke. I didn't want to win just 'cause I quit drinking and spent twenty years not making any money, you know? There wasn't enough. So I basically forced myself to go to songwriting boot camp. There were three of four days when it didn't happen — but because I didn't have alcohol or unhappiness or anything to get in the way, it started to open up and I started three of the four songs of mine that are on this album. And then it didn't matter if I won or not, because I had proved to myself that it was okay."