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I tried to WILD (by counting while thinking "dream") and became very calm and had some hypnogogic imagery and mind wandering. But when it didn't work after maybe an hour I gave up...but was left sleepless for hours and it ruined my night. What went wrong?
You held on too tightly to awareness at the expense of relaxation and falling asleep. WILD takes a very delicate balance between awareness and relaxation and takes lots of practice to learn to navigate. It can take dozens, hundreds even of attempts to "get it." Try to take something away from each attempt, learn something from them.
Staying positive is also very important. If you harbor negative thoughts ("it ruined my night") it can influence future attempts negatively. Maybe reserve WILD attempts for those nights where you can afford to lose some sleep so you don't get upset about being awake. Treating WILD as "meditation time" can help you to stay positive about the time you spend awake.
In order to WILD you must, first and foremost, fall asleep. Those serious about LDing practice will probably spend a lot of time awake when they may otherwise be sleeping (WILD, WBTB in particular), this is par for the course. There are DILD approaches that don't involve staying awake for long periods of time at night, but even DILD does benefit from WBTB.
LDing entails experimentation and adjustment based on your experiences. So now you know to emphasize falling asleep more. Counting is considered by some to require too much awareness to keep up, try another anchor, maybe tracing out a circle in your mind, or visualizing something, try different things to find what works for you.
Thanks, FryingMan, for the thoughtful advice to a rank novice. Impressive LD Count of 222. (I'd better listen!)
Love the Bön avatar too, btw.
I'm but a mere midget amongst the giants on this site :). But I hope you find something useful in my suggestions. The Tibetan dream yoga literature holds some amazing insights into the nature of consciousness, awareness, and lucidity, I highly recommend it