How do I write a directory full with some stuff with cdrecord?

You don't. cdrecord will burn a cd iso image, but won't make that image for you. Try mkisofs. The man pages for both commands give good examples. Or use k3b if you want a gui and don't want to read the man pages.

Brian

In general, this sort of thing is much easier to do with a GUI. In gnome (and probably kde) I just put a blank CD or DVD in the drive and wait for the recorder app to pop up. Then I drag files or directories into it and tell it to write the disk..

Doing it on your own will require to you do a couple of steps manually.

First you have to create an image for the CD/DVD you want to create. This is done with the mkisofs command similar to this:
Then, when you have the image, you can write to the disk as follows:
Unfortunately, there are a lot of options to cdrecord, and it's sometimes difficult to even figure out what "dev=" should point to. I believe you have to run "cdrecord -scanbus" if it doesn't like /dev/cdrom or /dev/dvd.

The examples above came from this page. http://www.linuxcommand.org/man_pages/cdrecord1.html

Use k3b, unless you're out of beer / soda coasters. (it's basically just drag, drop, click)