Could it be good to mix the writing and recording in a way? Lets say you record your dreams in the voice recorder at night and later you write it down in your journal. It feels to me as if that is almost equally good considering the emphasis on the importance of letting your brain remember the dream. You record them and remember them when you play it back, and then you can write about it and at that time your applying the effort part to it all. The difference is where the effort comes in, but in my opinion it feels as if you still care as much about remembering all the small parts as your actually taking the time to write it all down. And that, to me, seems equally valid.
I'm fortunate to have avery good telephone with an in build voice recorder. I'm just astounded I never thought of this.