Hi vigiaemnewbie, this concept is the whole idea behind editable templates, to allow authors to manage the templates. However, you could follow these steps for a developer to create initial content for a static template:
1. Create a page, add whatever content you like.
2. Create a new template node under your application folder /apps/myapp/templates/newtemplate
3. Copy the jcr:content node of that page under the template node