At one point I started recording my dreams and managed to write every day for a full year. At first I would have an increase in my dream recall. This happens every time I try it. Some nights like on weekends when I slept in, I would have to write up to 5 or 6 dreams. My lucid dreams increased from one or two every couple months to as many as two in the same week. This happens every time. Unfortunately I also began to resent writing my dreams down, like ever time. I went through over a year of not being able to recall any of my dreams, lucid or not, even immediately after waking up without an alarm clock. Eventually my dream recall came back.

As for reality testing, I would often decide during dreams that I was awake. Worse, if I just plain skipped to realizing I was dreaming, I found I didn't care. In the dream I might be aware of dreaming, but I didn't remember why I had wanted to know it or what I was going to do about it.