Does the dream become less vivid after you become lucid? Do you feel like you are struggling to keep from waking up? This should improve as you get more practice. If it bothers you, there are lots of tricks you can use to actively try to improve the clarity. Like you already said, it can be difficult to remember to actually do any of these tricks.

Have you checked out the Dream Stabilization Tutorial?
Dream Stabilization and Clarity Tutorial - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views