The answer is, of course, both.

Anyway, instead of biting your nails with anticipation for the shortlist for the Alibi Crime Writing Competition (you did enter, right?), why not put your fingers to more productive (or, at least, creative) use by entering the Perfectly Formed Short Story Competition, being run by Waterstones, Pan Macmillan and the Arvon Foundation.

Stories can be in any genre as long as they’re under 2000 words, though (the opposite to the BBC writing Academy) if you’ve had fiction professionally published you’re not allowed to enter.

The prizes seem pretty good – the winning story’ll be published in a forthcoming issue of Books Quarterly, Waterstones’s promotional magazine, and you get to go to a lunch with some folks from Pan Macmillan and on a week-long Arvon course (all about writing and the like), as well as winning some Pan Macmillan books. There are a couple of runner-up prizes too.

So, worth a go – nice short wordcount, and with online entry, you don’t even have to buy a stamp.

Full details at the link above, or, if you can’t be bothered to sweep your mouse up the page a bit, then here it is again, lazybones: tch, you appal me.

EDITED TO ADD: Oops, forgot to say, the closing date is 1 July. I appal me.