It’s great that you want to get into LDing and made an effort after reading our experiences. But I do think that you should start from square one instead of just saying “a lucid dream… I want one of those!” and laying down.
As dagto said, you should definitely have good dream recall. I see you already started on that, so I won’t say anything more there.
You may have a specific lucid dream in mind, but your posts don’t convey that; it seems like you just want to have a lucid dream at all. That’s well and good, but if you’ve never had one before, you’ll either have a hard time having one or you’ll have one and not know what you want to do once the initial excitement of becoming lucid dies down. Visualize a scenario in your head.
You’re ______________, going along with the dream, when you either do a reality check and become lucid or you realize that nothing around you is possible. You take a few seconds to ground yourself in the dream, feeling out your dream senses and making sure that initial excitement dies down a bit so that you don’t jump awake. You then _______________.
Fill in those blanks. The first should be a pretty common dream theme that you have (this is where that recall comes into play), and the second should be whatever you want to accomplish in the dream, as detailed as you can get it. If it’s something like flying, think about how you want to get off of the ground, your posture while flying around, and the sensations of flight. If it’s visiting a place, think about how you’ll get there, such as finding it behind a closed door or simply teleporting there, and think about what you’ll do while there. If you want to transform into something else, think about what will induce the change, how changing will feel, how you’ll view the world (from higher up or from closer to the ground, in different colors, etc.), and how your new body will feel once you’re done changing. You should be able to think of details for almost any dream goal. The better you have things planned out and the more you dwell on those plans during the day, the smoother your lucid dreams will go. If they’re not private, describe your goals to us, and we can tell you our experiences with them to give you a better visualization.
If you’re trying WILD again, make sure you’re doing it in the middle of the night, not just as your fall asleep for the first time. When people say they “walk into” the dream, it’s because the image of the dream has formed in their mind and they are clearly “seeing” it, even with their eyes closed. I wish I could address the saliva issue, but the most you can do is not think about it. Don’t actively avoid swallowing, but don’t think about how often you’re doing it.
Best of luck!