How can I burn an audio CD in iTunes with my music library on an external drive?

I keep my entire music library on an external hard drive. I just tried to burn a playlist in iTunes, and iTunes goes through all of the motions (asks for a blank cd, says it's burning) and then it says "Finishing burning" for a while. Then iTunes tells me I have a blank CD in my computer.
I fear the issue is that the music is not on my computer. However, I've added all of the music folders to iTunes, and it plays them off of my external hard drive.
Please help! Thanks.

Great suggestion.  I had quickly considered burning a disc outside of iTunes with Burnz only to learn that trial period had ended.  So...thanks to your 2x4 blow to my head, I tried a Finder burn and got an error, too: The disc can’t be burned, because the device failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media.  Doing a big of research indicates this might be simply a dust problem in my MacBook and can be resolved with some compressed air.  Checking my toolbox shortly and I'll report back!  Thanks!

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