I personally love being able to look back at a pile of scruffy scribbled in books full of dreams. It shows the effort I've put in and they make an interesting read too!

Dream Journals are definitely a necessity. Even if you could remember all your dreams perfectly without one, keeping a record makes the dream more solid in your mind and makes it last. It also makes it possible to notice things that can help when becoming lucid- like dream signs that might have gone unnoticed.

Writing down all your dreams not only helps recall but tells your brain 'Lucid dreaming is important'. If you stop journalling or put less effort into it, Lucids are probably going to become less common, no matter how skilled a person is.

I know some people hate writing down dreams (and I def know how much of a pain it is when I wake up late for work and immediately want to spend half an hour describing some crazy dream ) but I don't think there is an easier alternative and if there was it prob wouldn't do as much good as taking time and writing everything out.