Hey there everybody...

I'm basically new to Dream Recall and LD, so I thought I'd introduce myself and ask for a bit of advice. So, first post, here goes:

I'm 20, and don't dream. (Or at least, I don't remember my dreams...) I've only ever been able to remember a dream very rarely ever since I was about 14, like about once a year. I THINK this is because I'm a very deep sleeper...

Lately (as in, over the past year), the fact that I can't remember my dreams has been really getting to me. So, early last year, I tried some basic dream recall techniques (waking up self with an alarm, etc) that I got from the net, and these seemed to help somewhat. Then I lapsed, but I'd really like to try again.

Although lucid dreaming is my eventual goal, first I'd really like to be able to reliably and vividly recall my dreams.... Part of the reason for this is that recently I've taken up writing short-stories in my spare time, and one dream I had (a remembered dream being a VERY rare occurence for me) a couple of months ago gave me some massive inspiration for a short story I'm writing at the moment. And so, I think being able to reliably recall my dreams would allow me to draw some creative inspiration from them. From there, I hope maybe I can also tech myself (or be naturally able to) have lucid dreams. I may even be a natural lucid dreamer, but I just don't know, because lucid or not, I just can't usually remember my dreams.

Now, I've done a fair bit of background reading (mostly from the net) about dream recall and lucid dreaming. At the moment, what I'm doing, is going to bed and setting my alarm to go off at around about 4.5 hours after I go to sleep, and waking up, lying still for a moment to gather my memories from the dream, and then writing it all down in my handy-dandy notebook...

So.... yeah, that's me, and that's where I'm at right now, and I'd really appreciate any advice anyone could give me, most importantly on improving my dream recall and "vividness", and then maybe later, on inducing lucid dreams.

Thanks in advance!