How to stablize FILD

I've managed to FILD twice, both during the morning. I had one twenty minutes ago, and it only took about eight seconds to enter. When I opened my eyes the room was flashing and there was this kneeling statue by the door flashing all these fluro colors. I went to look at the clock but everything flashed when I moved my eyes, so I closed them and tried to stabilize by imagining myself in my room. I could really feel myself in the bed and could hear my neighbour cough, and I thought I'd woken up. I open my eyes and the figure was still there, and while most of the flashing was gone it still happened when I went to look at the clock.

I flipped over and then I was in a completely different room with that freaking out 'DO IT' ginger guy, and he told me he had taken a hit of delirium and something else, and I responded I'd taken salvia (it was somewhat fading here, lol. i still was reminding myself to RC in the back of my mind). It then switched to my old house and then I woke up.

I don't know if it was hard to stabilize because of sleeping (went to sleep at 3:30, tried this at 9:30am) or because it's my second attempt and I'm new to lucid. I'm actually really terrible at controlling anything in my lucid dreams, which kind of sucks.

The other FILD that worked was on the 9th, and it happened at 6:20am. I thought I'd entered sleep paralysis because I was all of a sudden so exhausted I couldn't move. After a while I tried moving, and everything blurred and I had an incredibly realistic, vivid FA.

Usually I wake briefly during the night after dreams (lately i've been fucking around and going to bed at like 2am-4am (including last night), so hopefully I can go back to that in a few days), so it I figured this would be an ideal technique for me, as long as I can control properly.

How can I improve my control in general? I was kind of surprised I couldn't instantly do all this stuff when I had them, because I've always had excellent recall and usually detailed dreams. (usually an average 6-8 dreams per night. apart from the last few nights, where my dreams ranged from 1-5 because of sleeping habits) I've even had a few coincidentally lucids.

Is there any reason my control is terrible, or is it a newbie thing?

Thanks for the help :)