as you should know by now you cant "write" to optical media like you do a floppy or a flash drive or your hard drive.
if you have a project on a CD-ROM/DVD and dont copy it to your computer (something that can be written to) you wont be able to do anything to it, no changes can be saved because its only on a "locked" and unwriteable media.
so copy it to the desktop and open that one.