Last night I had my first lucid experience, but I had a few questions about future experiences I will have. This is very newbish of me and I can understand how many users may be annoyed by this so I apologize in advance.

So basically I fell asleep at a decent hour and had random dreams throughout the night which I cannot remember because I haven't been keeping a DJ. After a while of non-lucid dreaming, I spontaneously spawned into a brand new dream. I ended up in a department store esque setting (I had been to Walmart earlier this week so perhaps this was just my subconscious spewing this information back at me). Lately I've picked up the habit of doing the nose pinching thing every time I practice the awareness technique in real life. As soon as I spawned into this new dream, for some reason I pinched my nose and inhaled without thinking, as if it were a reflex. I felt air rush through my nostrils, and suddenly I felt a more realistic dream environment. Within a minute or two the dream ended and I went into a blank state without dreaming.

Why did my dream end so suddenly? Was it lack of stabilization? Or does it just take practice to maintain the lucid state? Any tips relevant to this are appreciated.