Thanks for the welcome, BlueWalls!

I've rarely ever used dreams as inspiration for my own writing; usually mine come from daydreams, random things that pop into my head while awake and present themselves already formed in a story structure. Much like you, many of my dreams are mundane, and if not mundane, surreal, but so far none of the surreal stuff has appealed to me for use in writing. Still, the thought of lucid dreaming my way into my own stories seems like it would be a huge help and just a fantastic experience regardless!

I'm trying to do the WILD technique. I have a really hard time waking myself up and staying awake long enough to really focus on much of anything, let alone lucid dreaming. If I set an alarm, I tend to get up, turn it off, maybe use the bathroom, but all in a dreamlike state of awareness, and I can't seem to get enough awareness going to remember why I set the alarm early in the first place. I'm up for 5 minutes tops and when I go back to bed I tend to go back to sleep quickly and with no more intention or awareness than I had at the beginning of the night. I'm hoping that Sunday soon, however, I'll get it right and the technique will pay off.

One problem I've noticed is that when attempting to WILD it is recommended that you stay as still as possible and do visualization/conceptualization to get your brain thinking that it is already asleep and dreaming. I am totally unable to fall asleep unless I'm on my side, and I can't fall asleep without a lot of tossing and turning from one side to the other, so I'm never still long enough to get that part of the technique right.

As for my dream signs, just for fun I'll mention them: the first is the appearance of giant, maze-like bathrooms with bizarrely shaped toilets and urinals (usually in some luxurious, clean setting) and the second is the scenario of being chased by a Tank, not the military vehicle but the hulking, muscular zombies from the "Left 4 Dead" videogames. I actually had another one with a Tank chase in it last night, and wrote about it in my first Dream Journal entry here on DV. I should point out that while sort of tense, the Tank chases are rarely if ever truly terrifying, and I think that's because I'm used to them as a video-game menace and not something that could actually be harmful. The maze bathrooms have appeared in many dreams I've had since last fall as well.