Perhaps drawing used by copper delayed arresting the writer, say (10)
I believe the answer is:
articulate
'say' is the definition.
(I know that say can be written as articulate)
'perhaps drawing used by copper delayed arresting the writer' is the wordplay.
'perhaps drawing' becomes 'art' (drawing is an art).
'used by' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'copper' becomes 'Cu' (Cu is the chemical symbol for copper).
'delayed' becomes 'late' (running late).
'arresting the writer' becomes 'i' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'cu'+'late'='culate'
'culate' after 'i' is 'iculate'.
'art'+'iculate'='ARTICULATE'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for articulate that I've seen before include "well-spoken" , "Showing fluency 16 [OF SPEECH]" , "Eloquent" , "Well-constructed" , "split into clearly distinct parts" .)