What Counts As Writing

I often read that writers should write every day. That makes a lot of sense to me, because I'm basically an all or nothing person. For instance when I started exercising, I had to do it every day. Every time I tried to start an exercise regime only 3 times a week, I'd fail. But once I set my sights on exercising every day, I got into the swing of it, then it became a habit, and now I've exercised 809/898 days. It's a habit that would take some time to break. So the same goes for writing. I've started devoting several hours every night to writing.

But now I'm in between manuscrips. So what counts as writing? I decided that for my next manuscript I was going to try to take time to plan ahead more than I have in the past. So I'm working on developing my main characters right now. (I'm leaving pleanty of room for flexibility, but really want to know my characters well before I start writing them.)

So does this count as writing?
What about nights that I spend investigating agents and querying?
I also spend a lot of time reading the blogs, etc. because I feel this is a valuable way to stay in touch with what's going on. But I'm trying not to get bogged down in this.

So far this month, I did one minor revision of Zombie Rabbit, but everything else has been prep or query.