Welcome! Everyone's wired differently, but I can reassure you that I, for one, see dry spells as completely normal, if annoying. Some days I have amazing dream recall, I can go on for pages and pages, and other days my recall is so vague that even if I'm sure I dreamed something, I can't think of a single concrete word to describe it. It's even more disconcerting when I can remember only tiny fragments of what I know was an incredibly long and complicated narrative. I've been paying attention to this for a long time but I still haven't found any patterns that predict why my dream recall is better some nights than others... it doesn't seem to have much to do with what I eat or drink the day before, what vitamins or supplements I take, how much I slept or how often I woke at night.

So take heart! The best thing to do is to be consistent and keep at it. Write down as much as you can remember each day, and even if some days are a total wash, others will reward you with richer details.

As for your trouble WILDing, I've had lots of successes over the years but lots of failed attempts too... and probably far more of the latter than the former. Sometimes I feel like I'm in an arms race with my own mind -- lucid dreaming is hard work, or at least my mind insists on interpreting it as such, so usually it would rather just lazily fall asleep than have to keep paying attention. It can take relentless determination and persistence to succeed at WILDing, but it's worth it, so don't give up! There's a lot of techniques you can read about on these forums, so keep trying new things to find out what works best for you. Honestly I don't find DILDing any easier, just more random.