I have tried to write in my dream journal several times, but I have no Idea where in my dream to start. I cant remember the whole dream perfectly, and when I start to write something down, I remember another part of the dream that was earlier, or I realize that that couldn’t have happened and must have been part of another dream. What should I do? And are dream journals really that important?
welcome to the forum 
you start as far back in the timeline as you can. If i am writing and then remember an earlier part i use 2 *s to show the paragraph and where it should be inserted. this is why it’s always a good idea to have a typed copy somewhere too … since it is easily edited.
Dream journals always improve recall (although spending time to fully recall the dream would be a good substitute) a downside is that you wouldn’t have a record of your dreams and it would be harder to spot dream themes that reoccur.
Let me know if you are going to start a DJ in this actual topic (making this topic your DJ) otherwise it will be moved to one of our other forums.
I don’t think it’s important to keep in narrative unless (and not even then, more like until) you want to post it. For example, here’s a raw unedited doodle early in the morning, from my own dream diary:
[spoiler]Vacation beach, with Mh & K. And Sibling. and 2 others (Anjie? Z?)
We explore a house.
We find the woman inside was abused by her husband.
She comes in with a knife.
I stab her with a pencil as Mh twisted off the knife.
Before that has something with Anjie’s hat catching fire, on pink blankets…
Anyway, I’m miserable because I saw this coming and should have had a choice. Some angel named Isolde came into memory… so I hoped to release woman’s ghost.
We toured the islands.
I had a nightmare that night, exploring what would have happened if I’d run. In one, I turn myself into a green Pekkala, wrestle the knife away from my neck and stabbed the woman with it.
“Smart,”
“No! … In this scenario, you die!”
Why do you look so drained?
WE KILLED SOMEONE! “The blossom was ready to fall” You’re just saying that because she attacked YOU. She should have died naturally.
But Mh turned to our host and descretely asked how people die here.
“Their eyes cross if they die naturally, and because these are islands, their spoiling bodies even ants won’t touch.”
Something about undertaker/valkyrie sharks.
I feel sad.[/spoiler]
See, I backtrack a lot, and change tenses, and some dialogue is broken. This is the same dream as I posted it here. Reading the raw entry over, the descriptions of events are impossibly vague for anyone else to get an image. But, just for me these are sufficient trigger words to spark memory-- for example, I didn’t write down right away the beautiful dream image of the dome of stars, but just from “We toured the islands” with everything else, I could remember it.
I kept dream journals for years without having a single lucid dream, and I don’t keep a dream journal so diligently anymore unless it’s a lucid – or I feel it’s a numinous-- dream. So, my first instinct is that it isn’t as important as a lot of lucid dreamers make it out to be. On the other hand, I already know how my memory can be triggered from my practice with writing down my dreams.
I used to try writing the dream in present tense, because some dream logger said this helps keep a part of your mind in the dream as if it’s still happening-- this did not work for me. It stopped my mind/memory expanding through the plot.
Some dream diaries come with pre-drawn tables like “characters” “items” “settings” – but those didn’t work for me, either, because I needed that messy run-on connectedness to remember the dream.
They may work for you, however. Just feel free to experiment and find what works best with your wiring. 
Thanks, really helped. And no, Im not going to post my dream journal here, I just thought that this would be the proper place to put it as it about dream journals.