Frustration

I've spent the last three nights working on my dreams, the first two nights I at least had much better recall. However, the third.....

I had an unsuccessful night... Perhaps even more unsuccessful than normal! I went to sleep around midnight, set my alarm for 5:30... as suggested on the forums. I woke up at 5:30 and I could only remember one rather boring dream. I stayed up for around 30-40 minutes as suggested by the WBTB tutorial and finally went back to bed.. when I went back to bed i focused on getting a lucid dream. Once again, as suggested: I repeated a mantra in my head until i fell asleep, "I will have a lucid dream" and "I will remember my dream" This is the last thing i remember... and I just woke up again at 9:30. I'm a little frustrated because I feel like I got closer to a LD last night without doing any of the methods!

Maybe I just need to focus on dream recall for another couple nights or a week before I attempt to go at a full fledged lucid.

Don't worry that nothing much happened last night, its all about sticking with it. The mantra's you were repeating will still have an impact on your subconscious just not necessarily right away, but over time the more often you repeat them the more powerful the effect will be.

Also sometimes putting too much pressure on yourself can actually hinder rather than help in becoming lucid. Follow the steps just like you did last night but try to have a more relaxed attitude about it, like its something you're just playing around and having fun with (that's the way our brians naturally accquire new skills - think about a baby learning to walk or talk) and before you know it you'll be lucid.

Is it a bad idea to try a different method tonight? Or should I stick with wbtb for a couple nights?

Experiment, different things work for different people. And through any method you will increase your chances of a lucid dream, just by reading this forum you increase your chances. The only thing I can warn you about is attempting and getting frustrated with WILDs. You can (and should) try them, but don't be discouraged if you can't do it right away. It's good to have a few lucid dreams from DILD or MILD first, well it helps anyways.